The story of Yone Noguchi; told by himself;

Seattle

iiH^f

THE STORY OF
YONE NOGUGHI

In 1910 came the first book of essays, " Kamakura,"
embellished with half tones of indifferent quality which
look all the cruder by their contact with the beautiful
Japanese paper on which the body of the book is printed.
The essays themselves are, however, needless to remark,
delightful. In the "Temple of Silence" there is a
passage which we of the modern city with its din of
motor omnibuses, would do well to read and take to
heart : "I had journeyed from Tokyo, the hive of noise,
here to read a page or two from the whole language of
silence which, far from mocking you with all sorts of
crazy-shaped interrogation marks, soothes you with the
song of prayer."

(l In 1910 also, Noguchi published " Lafcadio Hearn in
^^^' We talked of

.-M-l books and art through the morning and afternoon, and I
made the much desired and long anticipated photographs.
And now that I have known Noguchi, I go back to
his books with a renewed interest. His is the quiet
calm of the contemplative East. That he is not given
to idle talk for its own sake it is easy to see, for in con-
trasting the Japan of to-day with that of a hundred
years ago, in his book about Hearn, he says that " the
interruptions which pass nowadays under the hypo-
critical name of sociableness did not flap in the air so
wantonly" ; but that he can lecture with sincerity and
purpose many have been privileged to discover during
his present visit to England.

OTHER BOOKS BY YONE NOGUCHI

FROM THE EASTERN SEA

THROUGH THE TORII

THE SPIRIT OF JAPANESE POETRY

^s

YOXR xoauoHi

THE
STORY OF

YONE NOGUCHI

TOLD BY HIMSELF

ILLUSTRATED BY

YOSHIO MARKING

PHILADELPHIA

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Printed in Great Britain by Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co,
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

TO

HIFUMI, MY DAUGHTER

SIX YEARS OLD

NOTE

Of the articles in this book, " Some Stories
of my Western hfe " and " My First London
Experience " appeared in the Fortnightly
Review ; " A Japanese Temple of Silence " in
the Quest; " Isamu's Arrival in Japan" in
The Nation ; '* The Lantern Carnival " in the
Graphic, "Chicago" is the oldest article in
the book, as it was written in 1900, that
is, some fourteen years ago. I thank the
publishers of the magazines for permission to
reproduce them here.

vii

CONTENTS

I. How I Learned English 1

II. Some Stories of my Western Life 25

III. Joaquin Miller 55

IV. Chicago (I9OO) 84
V. My First London Experience (1903) 119

VI. Again in London (1913-14) 139

VII. KicHo No Ki 166

VIII. IsAMu's Arrival in Japan 185

IX. The Story of my Own Uncle 200

X. The Lantern Carnival 213

XI. A Japanese Temple of Silence 222

XII. Epilogue 245

IX

ILLUSTRATIONS

YoNE NoGUCHi Frontispiece
Joaquin Miller To face page 5Q

Misty Evening in Trafalgar Square 122

151 Brixton Road 1S6

Beautiful Women in Bond Street 158

Lotus Lake at Tsushima 172

Shinto Temple of Tsushima 224

Buddhist Meditation 238

XI

THE

STORY OF YONE NOGUGHI

I

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

My first sensation, when I got a Wilson's spell-
ing-book in my tenth year, was something I
cannot easily forget ; I felt the same sensation
when, eight years later, I first looked upon
the threatening vastness of the ocean upon
my embarking on an American liner, where I
felt an uneasiness of mind akin to pain for the
conquest of which I doubted my little power.
I remember how I slept every night with that
spelling-book by my pillow, hoping to repeat
the lesson whenever I awoke at midnight;
the smell of the foreign book, which troubles
my nostrils I feel even to-day when I think
about it, charmed, mystified, and frightened my
childish mind. My teacher, in fact the only one
teacher in the whole town (Tsushima in Owari
province), who knew anything of English, soon

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

found his inability to advance beyond the
twentieth page of the book ; when I got
another teacher, who had been newly appointed
to the grammar school of the town, I was
asked to buy a copy of Wilson's First Reader,
which my father got at Nagoya after walking
fifteen miles. It happened that one day I
lost the Reader ; when it was discovered some
months later, it was in the little shrine of the
Goddess of Mercy at the corner of the Kojoji
Temple yard where I used to wrestle with
other boys after school was over ; doubtless I
had placed it there offhand when I hurried to
the sport. As I had only got the book after
causing great trouble to my father, I could
not tell him about its disappearance ; but as I
could not study my lesson without the book,
I borrowed one from my friend who studied
with the same teacher, and copied whole pages
in the storehouse, where I trembled when I
heard father's steps. From the winter of my
eleventh year, the English Readers began to
be officially taught in our school ; and we were
put under a far better teacher, whom the town
engaged for his English; but we boys soon
grew suspicious of his knowledge, which we had
thought wonderful at the beginning, when one
day an American missionary (the first foreigner
I ever saw) called at our school, and our

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

English teacher seemed not to understand his
words.

The school was in a certain Buddhist temple
long left to dusts and ruin, the prayer-hall of
which, with a huge gold Buddha idol on the
sacred dais, was temporarily turned into our
classroom ; my unusual love of pranks often
drove me to climb up that Buddha's shoulders,
and once I wrote down on his holy breast the
words, " See the boy and the dog," with white
chalk, for which 1 was at once punished by
the teacher. We were one morning frightened
by the sudden fall of the Buddha, when the
house shook terribly from jishin (earthquake) ;
for some reason I could not run away to the
open yard ; and as a paper shoji door fell over
me to make my little head immovable through
its wooden frame, I shut my eyes, and cried hard
for help. When the shaking was over, our
English teacher told us that jMm was ** earth-
quake " in English ; that word was the longest
word I learned in those days. My eldest
brother at Tokyo sent me a copy of somebody's
geography for a New Year's gift, which I took
around among my friends to impress their
minds that I was quite superior to them ; in
fact, such a book was a great curiosity then in
our town. I know I must have been very

ambitious to learn the English language ;

3

THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

whenever my father sent me on an errand
without, I always carried the Reader in my
sleeve ; once, on my way to somewhere, 1 wrote
down with chalk my English lesson on all the
wooden fences 1 came across. Father scorned
me for my delay when I returned ; on my
confession of what I had done, I was sent out
again to rub off with wet rags what I had
written.

I left the town, a dreamy valley with
another name, the Town of Purple Waves,
in my thirteenth year, for Nagoya, where I
became a student at the Otani school, newly
opened, under the support of the main
Buddhist temple of the Otani sect. It was
here that I had my first foreign teacher, who
used Longmans' Readers for textbooks. How
he looked I do not remember to-day ; but the
strange smell of his skin or breath from too
much tobacco smoking, the smell we Japanese
used to called Western-people smell, is most
distinctly in my memory. And another thing
I remember about that foreign teacher is that
he had a little anchor tattooed on his wrist.
Although we were a little suspicious of his
blue mark, we never knew that he was only a
common sort of sailor, till he was seen at a
show acting as umpire of a wrestling match be-
tween an American sailor and one professional

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

Japanese wrestler, when he was dismissed
from school. In those days, when we had
little experience with foreigners, a white skin
and red hair were a sufficient passport for a
Western teacher in any Japanese school. My
ambition to learn English was never satisfied
with only the textbooks; I found a man
whom I took for a scholar from the mere fact
that he had recently returned from America (I
had hardly any knowledge of America then
beyond my little imagination, in which all the
Americans lived in marble houses), and took
him Smiles's Self Help^ which I had heard of
in those days. How my hope was overthrown
when his English was discovered to be limited
to the names of wines and drinks which he
had learned at a certain down-cellar in San
Francisco as a barkeeper 1 Receiving a note
from my brother that my school would be
changed for a better one, where I could get a
thorough education under a far more com-
petent teacher, I moved to the Nagoya High
School under a prefectural governor's super-
vision ; I was given here the Second National
Reader, which was far too easy for my mind,
which intended even then to go over every
page of the English dictionary to put it in my
memory. It was my ambition to make my

study advance in the shortest time possible,

5

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

so that I could understand what a foreigner
spoke. How often, hoping to hear the Enghsh
words for the test of my ears, I stood at evening
against the fence of a missionary's house as if
in my poem which I wrote the other day :

" I put my face against the bolted door, bare, desolate ;
Beyond the door, I know, lies the lonely, the in-
visible, the vast (or is it the Eternal ?)."

Once I saw in the street a Western woman
with a httle girl, whom I followed, again
with the same purpose, that is, to test my
ears to find whether I could understand their
words; I followed after them still further in
despair of catching them. The girl suddenly
turned back and shouted : " Mamma, what
does this fellow want?" I ran away from
them at once in great shame ; but I slept
well that night, 1 remember, from satisfaction
that I could at least understand what the
girl said.

I came up to Tokyo, not waiting for
father's permission, in February when I was
fourteen years old, as my boyish ambition
had grown too big to be peaceful in a pro-
vincial city. The first English book I ever
read in a Tokyo school was Macaulay's Life
of Lord Clive, the beautiful style of which
excited my adventurous enthusiasm. When

6

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

my weakness in mathematics made me think
it quite difficult to pass the Government's
examination, 1 left the school in a sort of
preparatory system for Keio Gijiku founded
by Fukusawa, the greatest educator modern
Japan ever produced, the school where to-
day, twenty-four years later, I turn my
morning steps to deliver the so-called lecture
— of the real worth of which I have my con-
fessed doubt — on English poetry. At this
Keio I was put to learn somebody's economy
and history ; and you will wonder to know
that I learned also Spencer's Education (why
Education for a small boy to be educated ?),
to which I clung as if, in an old story, a blind
man to a huge elephant. And it was here
also that I became acquainted with Long-
fellow's village blacksmith, who looked

'' . . . the whole world in the face.
For he owes not any man."

I grew now even to despise the spoken
English language since my first touch with
the imaginative literature; I often excused
myself from the conversation class under an
American teacher, and forgot how hours
passed in the pages of Irving's Sketch Book,
which made me long for England and West-
minster Abbey. One day I picked up at

7

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

a second-hand shop Gray's book of poems

and Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, which,

both of them, I even determined to translate

into Japanese at the same time ; is there

anything under the sun hard to accomplish

for a boy ?

Now came a sudden turning of my hfe's

page; I was thrown, of course of my own

free will, into the strange streets of San

Francisco in the month of December of 1893,

in my eighteenth year ; my first despair there

was my linguistic incompetency, which made

me mad even to curse over the Japanese

teachers who had not given me the right

pronunciation of even one word. I used to

carry paper and pencil, when I had to go

out on some business, and write down what

I wanted to say; I was often taken for a

deaf mute. Indeed if I had stayed as such,

in the years of my Western life, with my

thought in the golden silence whose other

name is meditation, I might have become ten

times wiser. From the immediate necessity

of bread and butter (I had not known it

before), and also because I thought it a right

opportunity for learning the spoken English,

I found a job as a kitchen boy in a certain

Jewish family; I started at once to bother

the Irish cook with each name of the things

8

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

I found in the kitchen. When I was almost
through with the things there, I took a
further step to learn the strange names in
the dining-room and parlour, the first sight
of which, I distinctly remember, took my
breath away. That Jew must have been
rich. Although I knew that my being in
the family was through my service as a boy,
my young head was deep in my English
study ; from want of my hands' certainty
(perhaps that of my mind) I do not know
how many dishes I broke. It was about
that time that I came across Kingsley's
Three Fishermen^ and tried to remember it
so that I could recite it at any odd moment.
One morning the cook (that hot-tempered
Irishwoman whose heart must have been
dancing as Yeats' fairies) asked me to get a
dozen eggs at the grocer's near by; while
carrying in my hand the paper bag of eggs
from the grocer, I kept up reciting The Three
Fishermen so that I quite forgot the part of
my hand and dropped the bag to the pave-
ment. I was bitterly scolded by the lady of
the house when I got back, and told that the
price of the broken eggs would be taken out
of my wages. In the family there was a
young lady attractive enough to remind me
of Scott's Rebecca (I was somehow familiar

9

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

with Ivanhoe already then), who taught me the
Third Cahfornia State Reader every evening in
my little down-cellar room. My great sensi-
tiveness to female beauty, which was in a speedy
way of development, made me restless rather
than learn the lesson in face of this beautiful
woman, whose rich hair, when she sat by me,
almost touched my blushing face. But that
was sweet indeed. The one I hated with a
sense of fear was the master of the house,
large and stout in physique, red-faced again
with a wonderful red nose. He came down to
the cellar every morning calling me John,
and pushed out his foot for his shoe to be
cleaned. The feeling of being something like
a slave made me rebel; besides, when I was
told that I had to work one whole week for
nothing as I had broken one large window, I
decided to excuse myself from the house, not
troubling to ask for my release, under the
dusk of the night. When I left the Jew's
house, I put myself at a Japanese newspaper
office in the city, where I was engaged as a
carrier boy. I was glad with the new place,
because I found there a whole set of the En-
cyclopcedia Britannica, From my childhood
days I had not minded walking ; while walk-
ing to deliver the paper to some eighty places

(we had a circulation of less than one hundred

10

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

and fifty in the city), I always thought about
some English book ; and when I came to a
lonely street with nobody in sight, I was
pleased to recite loudly the lines from my
memory. Hamlet's soliloquy I was thinking
the greatest English writing; how hard I
tried to remember each line of it. There
lived at the office five or six young Japanese ;
to cook pancakes with water for their break-
fast was my morning work. One day when
I was perfectly forgetful of the burning pan-
cakes on the fire, as my whole mind was
absorbed in this newly discovered role of
Hamlet, my young friend called me by name ;
in a fit of anger I threw over him a big tin
pan brimming with flour and water. His
dirty clothing was miserably white-washed.
When I repented of my rash conduct, I found
that we had to go without breakfast that day ;
and worse still, my poor friend had no other
dress to change to. I was obliged to offer
him my clothes when he had to go out, and
to stay in bed myself the whole afternoon,
now thinking on the reality that foolishness
was altogether too expensive for me, then on
Napoleon, who, as I had read somewhere, had
one suit of clothes between him and his
brother in his younger days.

When I set out to peddle the cheap modern
11

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

Japanese colour-prints which some Japanese
had put down at a certain boarding-house in
pawn for his board, to gain practice in spoken
English or brush away my Oriental shyness
in speech was the first purpose before earning
a little pocket-money; I remember that my
first day's clear profit amounted to almost
two dollars. But the colour-prints were soon
exhausted ; and I turned my mind next to
canvassing for advertisements in our paper,
from which I received but little success. One
day when I was walking lazily with no par-
ticular purpose I found a little second-hand
bookshop in a certain street, and dropped in
to look around at the books, among which
my quick eye caught a book Dora Thome, a
story translated in Japan by the now Vis-
count Suematsu under the title of Tanima no
Himeyuri or the ** Lily of the Valley." I felt
a sudden desire for its possession which, being
almost irresistible, made me commit the first
and last crime of stealing; I put the book
under my coat while the proprietor, an old
man who seemed quite scholarlike and sympa-
thetic, was looking away. I was so sorry for
such a shameful act when 1 returned home;
and my sorrow grew larger when my mind, I
dare say of considerable literary taste at least

for my age, found the book did not encourage

12

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

my soul's curiosity. I decided to take it back
to the shop and to apologise to the old man
for my crime ; and I took the book one day
there. But my courage failed, and besides, I
could not find a chance to see the man alone.
So I took it there again a day or two later ;
and the man approached me from within, when
seeing me, and cast a friendly smile from his
open and honest face, a type I only saw
among the Americans of older generation.
Then he asked what book I liked. " I can-
not say what I like, but I know what I do
not like ; and here is one of the books not to
my taste," 1 exclaimed. And to astonish
him, I made my confession about the book as
best I could. How glad the old man was to
hear my story. He wanted to express his
forgiveness emphatically when he asked me if
I wished to take some book or books to read.
I was glad that my crime was forgiven in a
really nice way, and more glad that I gained
a good friend from whom I could draw out
the books to read. He handed me Keats' book
of poems, when I told him that I wished to
have a book which should have more an inner
beauty than Longfellow; and he said that if
I read the book intelligently, I might feel

"... like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
13

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

This old bookshop keeper and I became
quite friends during my long stay in Cali-
fornia; it was he who was the first to con-
gratulate me when my first book of poems,
Seen and Unseen, made some little literary
excitement in America. He wished me the
most sincere godspeed at my departure, a few
years later, for New York, and still farther for
London. I had a secret hope on my way
home to Japan, in 1904, to find him again in
San Francisco ; my disappointment was that
1 could not see any shadow of his little shop
or himself in all the city.

My stay at Palo Alto, a college town,
whither I went by walking from San Fran-
cisco as I felt I heard the voice of a scholarly
call, is one of the sweetest memories of my
life. I found my home there in a certain
lawyer s house, whose chief attraction for me
was that it contained a library. There I first
put my fingers on the pages of a book of Hugo's
while the whole family were absent. The lady
of the house, and her daughter, both of them,
used to attend Stanford University, the mother
for the study of zoology and the daughter as a
literature student. The family had quite a
sympathy with myself; when the lady dis-
covered my great love of books, she did not

mind if I read a book even while picking the

14

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

strawberries. She often built a fire herself
when I over-slept from my reading so late
at night. Although I did not believe in the
reading of newspapers, it seems that my mind
grew from those days attracted to them ; and
I soon found that to understand the news-
paper writing was another study. When the
China -Japan War broke out, I was working as
a dish-washer at a country hotel in the next
town to this Palo Alto ; the chef was a
Japanese, who from his ignorance of English
prized me highly, as I served him with all
the news translated. "Now you might go
upstairs and read the paper. Come down
after one hour with the news of victory," he
used to say. At the beginning I could not
understand the paper well ; but after a month
of hard study with a dictionary (I rarely went
to sleep before one o'clock in those days) I
made myself sufficiently able to understand
the news at one reading. When the war
advanced, and my purse grew heavy with my
earnings, my restless mind again asked for a
change; and my first desire was to see my
old friends at the paper office in San Fran-
cisco and talk on the war, so I hastened back
there again, where the proprietor begged me
to stay with him, this time not as a carrier boy

but as a translator. I thought it rather in-

15

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

teresting, as I was deadly tired with my
experience as a servant ; during three months
I stayed with the paper — in fact, I translated
everything from the American papers, from
the Japanese Emperor's Imperial Edict to a
tragedy of a street girl. I was not yet fully
twenty years old ; but it was I who ran Soko
Shimbun, our Japanese paper, even for a short
while. I think that it was in those days of
the China-Japan War that I had more chances
to speak English ; to anybody I came across,
I tried to explain the difference between China
and Japan, and above all, why we won the
fight. A certain Mr. Creelman lectured here
on the so-called Port Arthur brutality, on his
way to New York from the war field at
Manchuria. On the night of his lecture, I
appeared with my protest, which 1 had all
ready to deliver against that lecturer on the
spot, if my courage had not failed. The
vogue of the Mikado or the Geisha, a comic
opera, at that time made my true Japanese
heart pained, as I thought it was a blasphemy
against Japan; how often I wished to shout
from the pit or gallery on its absurdity. To
play a patriot or an exile was one of my
pleasures at that time.

I took only Poe's book of poems with me

when I left San Francisco in the month of

16

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

April 1896, for Joaquin Miller's hillside home,
back of Oakland, the " Heights " as he called
the place. My leaving the city to which I had
returned only five or six months before, should
be put partly to the count of my restlessness
of mind, but the chief reason was in my
thought that books should be read slowly but
thoroughly after having a good sound rest.
Although I read quite many books for my
age, particularly for a boy of foreign origin,
I thought that I could not say that I did
well understand them ; it is true to say that
I never read thoroughly all the words, from
the first to the last page, of any book of them.
The fine sleeping which had hitherto been
denied to me since my arrival in America,
I really thought was the first necessity for
the good understanding of books. When I
selected Poe's poems, I meant that I would
try to study his poetry alone at Miller's garden
where, as in To Helen, the moon shed her
light on the roses :

" That gave out, in return for the love light.
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death."

I read each line and all the words of Poe's
poems, my first love being Annabel Lee ;
in time they grew almost chiselled in my
mind, as I could recite them and bring out

IT B

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

their separate words for my need ; at the
highest moment of my Poe saturation, 1 con-
fess, I felt I was a Poe myself, and could not
speak any other language but Poe's ; I even
thought that I might be his incarnation when
I wrote the following, the second English
writing of my life, for instance :

'' Mystic spring of vapour ;
Opiate odour of colour ;
Alas — I'm not all of me !
Wanton fragrance, dewy, dim,
Curls out from my drowsy soul ;
Wrapping mists about its breast.
I dwell alone.
Like one-eyed star.

In frightened, darksome willow threads.
In world of moan.
My soul is stagnant dawn —
Dawn, alas, dawn in my soul !
Ah, dawn — close-fringed curtain
Of night is stealing up ; God —
Demon — light —
Darkness — Oh !
Desert of No-More I want ;
World of silence, bodiless sadness tenanted ;
Stillness."

When the poem (being printed in a little
magazine, as my existence already excited
some curiosity then) was criticised as a plagia-
rism from Poe's Eulalie, which contains the
exact following words :

18

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

" I dwelt alone
In a world of moan.
And my soul was a stagnant tide."

1 wrote an open letter in a San Francisco
paper that I was glad for having the moment
when I felt the same thought with Poe, and I
could not understand why I could not say the
same thing if 1 wanted to say it ; and I de-
clared I should like to understand poetry from
the point that it would be a journal of one's
feeling or the footmark of one's soul's expe-
rience. As 1 had a poor vocabulary and almost
no technique of composition, I started, from
the beginning, to cultivate my inner feeling,
and to express as best I could under the com-
mand; I had even moments when 1 felt
thankful for my lack of visible beauty in
technique, as my ideal poet, from the first,
was one such as I wrote of in The Pilgrimage,
my fourth book of poems :

" He feels a touch beyond word,
He reads the silence's sigh,
And prays before his own soul and destiny :
He is a pseudonym of the universal consciousness,
A person lonesome from concentration."

I soon grew to forget my Poe mania, when
my inner sense of poetry or poetical indi-
viduality seemed to be developing from my
naked lying before the Great Nature. How I

19

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

read the heart of Nature, and also my soul,
" separated from the mother, far away, aban-
doned by his native land and Time," alone
in the " dream-muffled canyon," in love with
" Being-formed Nothing," you may read in
my Seen and Unseen, the first book of poems
published in December of 1896, from a San
Francisco press.

Thus my first period of learning the English
language ended with this simultaneous enter-
ing of my first stage of English writing ; but
I have no hesitation to say that the books
were often my sweet companions as when I
led the so-called tramp life in the three suc-
ceeding years, once alone travelling in the
Yosemite Valley, where I took Milton's book
of poems, whose organ melody did well match
the valley's rhapsodic grandeur. On the other
occasion when I walked down from San Fran-
cisco to Los Angeles (how I walked those
hundreds of miles impresses my present mind
as quite wonderful), I was constantly with
Shelley, who is the poet bound naturally to
come after Keats. I found on my arrival in
Los Angeles that my copy of Shelley had
been lost ; from my immediate desire to get
another copy, I engaged to work one week at
a wooden- box factory ; when I had worked
well those seven days, T was able to buy, be-

20

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

sides the Shelley book, Verlaine's book of
poems, which appeared in an English transla-
tion first at that time. Ever since he is one
of my beloved poets. The first impression that
I received from that French poet, I should
say, awoke in my mind fifteen years later by
Enkakuji Temple of Kamakura, where I wrote
the following as the end of my poem, Moon
Night :

" Down the tide of the sweet night
(O the ecstasy's gentle rise !)
The birds, flowers and trees
Are glad at once to fall
Into Oblivion's ruin white."

During the four years that I stayed at
Miller's mountain home, I learned more
names of English writers and poets and more
of their writings, I think, by Miller's accidental
talk on them, than in any previous four years,
which made me wish to acquaint myself with
their works. Often I left the " Heights " for
San Francisco to read the books at the city
library. It was Miller who initiated me in
Thoreau and Whitman. While at San Fran-
cisco, sometimes I stayed at a Japanese board-
ing-house where I was charged nothing, as I
made a service of English letter-writing for
the proprietor, and sometimes at a certain

William Street, one of the most insignificant of

^1

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

little alleys, where my Japanese friends pub-
lished a comic weekly; here at the latter
place, I happened to become an actor in a farce
which set the whole town to laughing under
the heading '' How a Japanese Poet helped a
Burglar." One afternoon I was reading a
book in the room which was a parlour and
sleeping-room and editorial office by turns
(we occupied the lower floor, the upstairs
rooms were occupied by a Spanish tailor who
happened to be out that afternoon) when I
became a burglar or thief from my stupidity.
A young boy, Spanish or Mexican, about the
same age as myself, knocked at my door ask-
ing for the key which, he said, might fit the
rooms upstairs ; it was his intention, he de-
clared, to move the things away by the com-
mand of the tailor who had engaged some
other house. *' I lost the key on my way
here," he said. How could my mind of
innocence doubt him ? 1 helped him to open
the upstairs rooms, and also assisted to move
down a few things of some importance ; when
I found that it was too much to carry them
by himself, 1 offered him my service to help
him at least with the large looking-glass.
We walked some seven or eight blocks when
we were pursued by a large fat Irish police-
man, who took us by force to a police station

22

HOW I LEARNED ENGLISH

and duly locked us up. The next day I made
the first and last public speech of my foreign
life to clear myself from the charge. I believe
that my little speech was a masterpiece, in
which I said that it was a case of Japanese
etiquette or humanity turned to crime in
America by wrong application. It was my
last speech ; and I hope that so it may remain.
I left California for New York as the
stepping-stone to old smoky London. In
New York, where my first attempt to sell my
poetical wares and my California fame as a
poet of two or three years back seemed quite
nicely forgotten, I decided to play a sad young
poet whose fate was to die in a garret. Nature
here did not appeal to me much; and when
life grew more interesting to study and specu-
late on, 1 again took up my reading of English
books with renewed interest. I found a little
job in a certain family to wash dishes in the
morning and tend the furnace of a winter
evening ; here I used all my hours for reading
the books which I drew freely from the library
near by. It was in those days that I read
through the whole set of TurgeniefF and some
parts of Tolstoi ; before TurgeniefF, Daudet
was my favourite author. But I did not
forget to read the books of poems ; and I
wrote a few poems which I published in my

23

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

first London book, From the Eastern Sea,
I was glad that, when my English knowledge,
however little it might have been, and my in-
spiration played together most harmoniously,
I could turn out something as follows :

'' 'Twas morn ;
I felt the whiteness of her brow
Over my face ; I raised my eyes and saw
The breezes passing on dewy feet.

'Twas noon ;

Her shghtly trembling lips of passion
I saw, I felt ; but where she smiled
Were only yellow flashes of sunlight.

'Twas eve ;

The velvet shadows of her hair enfolded me ;
I eagerly stretched my hand to grasp her,
But touched the darkness of eve.

'Twas night ;

I heard her eloquent violet eyes
W^hispering love, but from the heaven
Gazed down the stars in gathering tears."

24

II

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

I

My new life began when I left Tokyo for
California; on the 3rd of November, 1893,
my friends saw me off at Shimbashi Station.
I felt most ambitious when they wished me
godspeed; but my heart soon broke down
when my eldest brother, who came to Yoko-
hama to bid me a final farewell, left me alone
on the Belgic. That was the name of my
steamer, an almost unimaginably small affair
for a Pacific liner, being only three thousand
tons. I cried when the last bell went ringing
round to make the people leave the ship ; I
cried more when my brother became invisible
among the hurrying crowd and distance; it
was my most bitter experience, as I cannot
forget the pain of sadness of that moment
even to-day. I stood by an iron rail on the
deck, a boy only eighteen years old, alone,
friendless, with less than one hundred dollars
in my pocket. I immediately grew con-
scious of the fact that I had to face unknown

25

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

America, a land of angels or devils, the
darkness.

It is true that it was my first experience
to see such a vastness of water, as 1 was born
in a place out of sight of the sea; and its
restless motion made me at once recall my
sickness on the water which I had experienced
when I joined a fishing party on the river
Kiso several years before. The most unagree-
able smell that filled the ** Chinese steerage"
made me already ill, even before the engine
began to turn ; I was practically thrown in
as if a little bundle of merchandise for
America. I could not eat, drink, for many
days, and I vomited even what 1 did not eat,
when the ship rolled. I was often obliged
to tie me round the iron pole by my canvas
bed ; I soon became a thorough sea-hater, as
1 am still to-day.

The steamer duly reached San Francisco
on a certain Sunday morning ; we, I and a
few other fellow-passengers, were taken to the
Cosmopolitan Hotel, whose shabby appear-
ance looked then palace-like and most won-
derful. And within it was not less handsome.
The American room was the first thing for
us ; even the sheets and the soft pillow, quite
strange for the head acquainted only with
hard wood, were a novelty. We put all the

26

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

fruits we had bought (what splendid California
fruits I) in a white bowl under the washing
table; when we were told, to our utmost
shame, that that bowl was for another
purpose, we at once thought that we were,
indeed, in a country alien in custom, and had
a thousand things to study. We acted even
more barbarously at the dinner-table ; we took
salt for sugar, and declared the cheese to be
something rotten. We did not know which
hand, left or right, had to hold a knife ; we
used a tablespoon for sipping the ccj^fFee, in
which we did not know enough to drop a
lump of sugar ; we could not understand that
those lumps were sugar. I stepped alone out
of the hotel into a street and crowd ; what
attracted my immediate attention, which soon
became admiration, was the American women.
" What lovely complexions, what delight-
fully quick steps," I exclaimed. They were
a perfect revelation of freedom ^ and new
beauty for my Japanese eye, having no rela-
tion whatever with any form of convention
with which I was acquainted at home; it is
not strange to say that I could not distinguish
their ages, old or young ; they appeared equally
young, beautiful, even divine, because my dis-
crimination lost its power at once. True, it
took some months, though not one year, before

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHl

I could venture to be critical toward their
beauty ; for some long time they only looked,
all of them, perfectly-raised California poppies.
I am happy to say that my first impression
never betrayed me during my eleven years
of American life ; not only in California, but
in any other place, they were my admiration
and delight.

Now to return to the adventure of my first
day in San Francisco. I again stepped out
of the hotel after supper, and walked up and
down, turned right, and again left, till the
night was growing late. AVhen I felt quite
doubtful about my way back to the hotel, I
was standing before a certain show window (I
believe it was on Market Street), the beauty
of which doubtless surprised me ; I was sud-
denly struck by a hard hand from behind,
and found a large, red-faced fellow, somewhat
smiling in scorn, who, seeing my face, ex-
claimed, ** Hello, Jap ! " I was terribly in-
dignant to be addressed in such a fashion ;
my indignation increased when he ran away,
after spitting on my face. I recalled my friend,
who said that I should have such a determi-
nation as if I were entering among enemies ; I
thrilled from fear with the uncertainty and
even the darkness of my future. I could not
find the way to my hotel, when I felt every-

28

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

thing grow sad at once ; in fact, nearly all the
houses looked alike. Nobody seemed to under-
stand my English, in the ability of which I
trusted ; many of the people coldly passed by
even when I tried to speak. I almost cried,
when I found one Japanese, fortunately;
he, after hearing my trouble, exclaimed in
laughter : *' You are standing right before
your hotel, my friend ! "

My bed at the hotel was too soft; it even
imitated, I fancied, the motion of the sea, the
very thought of which made me sleepless. I
sat alone on the shaky bed through the
silence of midnight, thinking how I should
begin my new life in this foreign country. In
my heart of hearts, I even acknowledged my
dead mistake in coming to America.

I had one introductory letter to Mr. Den
Sugawara, of the Aikoku Domei, or ** Patriot
Union," a political league, whose principal
object was to reform the bureaucracy at home,
to speak more directly, to put an end to the
Government of the Satsuma and Choshu
Clans, by demonstration with the publication
of free speech. I called on him next evening
at the back of O'Farrell Street ; the house,
this Aikoku Domei, was wooden and dirty.
I really wondered at the style of Japanese
living in San Francisco; I cannot forget my

29

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

first impression of the house where I made my
call. It reminded me, I thought then, of
something I had read about the Russian anar-
chists ; I confess that my feeling was gloomy.
The narrow pathway led me to the house of
two stories ; the lamplight from within made
the general aspect still worse. I climbed up
the steps which could not be wholly trusted ;
when I entered within, 1 smelled at once fishes
and even Japanese sake ; the clapping hands
and noisy chattering from another room made
me quite inquisitive. I presented my letter
to the said Sugawara, an office boy to a certain
doctor in those days, one of the prominent
members of Parliament to-day ; and was soon
admitted into the room of discussion. My
boyish blood, with love of adventure and
romance, began to rise when I found out
that the people, most of them young and
dauntless, were discussing how to help the
Hawaiian kingdom. I looked round the
room over each face of the people; and was
arrested by a face of different race, swarthy
and large, doubtless a Kanaka, who was, I
immediately found out, no other than Mr.
Robert Wilcox, the Hawaiian patriot. I
had already read about him a good deal ; but
I had never dreamed I should see him within
a few steps. When the talk came to a close,

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

it was decided that three members of the
Aikoku Domei should return home for ad-
vocating the independence of the Sandwich
Islands ; to live in history as a Japanese La
Fayette was no small matter at all. I con-
tributed all the money I could spare (every
cent I gladly parted with) on the spot for
the Hawaiian cause and her Majesty Queen
Lilliokauani ; it was partly from my little
vanity not to be taken for a mere boy, but
one worthy to be taken account of. Vanity
is always expensive.

The League was then publishing a daily
paper called the Soko Shimbun or the San
Francisco News^ for which I was engaged as
a carrier ; the paper had only a circulation of
not over two hundred. I did not enter into
any talk about payment ; I soon discovered it
was perfectly useless when we hardly knew
how to get dinner every day. You can im-
agine how difficult it was for five or six people
to make a living out of a circulation of two
hundred; I believe it was Mr. Crocker's
kindness (the house belonged to him) that we
could stay there without regular payment of
rent. When he decided to put up new
houses, he only begged us to move away,
not saying anything about the payment. By

turns, we used to get up and build a fire and

31

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

prepare big pancakes, you understand, with no
egg or milk, just with water. And a cupful
of coffee was all we had for our breakfast.
When we had no money to make supper, we
often went to a Chinese restaurant on Dupont
Street, or somewhere, to eat for the payment
of his advertisement in our paper. " Oh,
such a life," I exclaimed, finding it unbearable
at the beginning ; but I became soon satisfied,
even glad, as I could have plenty of time for
my own reading. I assure you that I was
quite a reader, and proud of my being ad-
vanced in my taste with literature, particularly
poetry.

There was no bed in the house ; we used to
sleep upon a large table, a mass of newspapers
serving as mattresses. I took down a volume
of the Encyclopcedia Britannica, which, I am
sure, contained Macaulay's essay on Byron ;
I made a nightly habit of reading it before I
went to sleep, using the book as my pillow.
Lord Byron was my favourite in those days,
as with any other boy ; that was long before
my days of Keats and Shelley. There was a
man called Watari, who acted toward me
rather fatherly; it was one of my delights
to talk with him, more often listen to him,
every morning, while still in bed, on poetry

and politics ; I cannot forget how he tired me

32

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

with his Darwinism, which I little understand
even to-day. It was about that time I began,
little by little, to read Hamlet ; once I de-
cided to remember every word of his famous
soliloquy, and having my mind fully occupied
with the recitation of it, I forgot for some
time to leave my best wishes with the papers
which I had to hand in to Japanese readers
at each place.

There was another club or league, mainly
social, but not less political, called the
Enseisha, or " Expedition Club," which
always acted differently from our Aikoku
Domei, and often expressed even open enmity
toward us. Truth to say, we had not one
day when we did not fight in the papers.
Enseisha was then publishing its own daily
(the Golden Gate News), which was not
better off financially than our paper. And
not only wath pen, our hands, too, helped to
settle our troubles ; when we called its mem-
bers cowards, they gave us the name of liars.
And we got still more angry. I can say,
when I reflect on the Japanese life in San
Francisco seventeen years ago, that we had
at least one pride, not to move from com-
mercial motives ; we never thought about
money and fortune. Really, I was surprised
to observe such a great change in the general

33 c

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

aspect of Japanese life when I stopped in
San Francisco on my way home in 1904 ;
it made me rather sad to know that money
was the reigning power. It was regarded
as foolish, even harmful, to talk on politics,
which was the only one subject for the
Japanese of the old days. A great fight
suddenly ensued between the Aikoku Domei
and Enseisha from the suspicion that two
members of the former were connected with
the dirty work of Tanaka, who robbed in
one way or another the money of Japanese
labourers in Idaho while he was their manager ;
we tried to prove the probity of our friends,
while the others blackened us. It was when
we held an open debate to explain the whole
affair at St. George Hall, Market Street, in
January of 1894, that one of my dear friends
in those days, Terutake Hinata, beat a mem-
ber of the Enseisha in the hall, who attempted
to disturb the meeting, and wounded him with
an iron bar, which he hid under his coat ; as a
consequence he was arrested. It took some
time before a peaceful settlement was brought
about between the two parties. Mr. Hinata
is to-day one of the figures in the Japanese
Parliament. Whenever I see him, we talk
on the old days in California, and sigh in
reminiscent mood from the feeling of sadness

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

mingled with a sort of joy which only be-
longs to the memory of a younger day.

When I began to reflect on what I had
come to America for, to ask myself how far
my English had improved, and what American
life I had seen, I regretted my mistake in asso-
ciating with the Aikoku Domei, and put an ad-
vertisement as a " schoolboy " in the Chronicle,
following the way of many other Japanese
boys. What domestic work has that *' school-
boy" to do? The work is slight, since the
wages are little — one dollar and a half a week.
We have to leave our bed before six, and build
a fire for breakfast. Don't throw in too much
coal, mind you ; your Mrs. Smith or Mrs.
Brown will be displeased with you, surely.
She can hear every noise you make in the
kitchen, she can see how lazy you are as clear
as can be, no matter if she be busy with her
hair upstairs. " Charlie, isn't the water boil-
ing ? " she will cry down. Charlie ! Your
father didn't give the name to you, did he ?
A great pile of dirty dishes will welcome you
from the sink when you return from your
school about four o'clock. Immediately, a
basketful of peas will be ready to be shelled.
You must go without dessert, if you eat the
strawberries too often while picking. Saturday

was our terror-day. We had to work all day

35

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

beginning with the bathroom. Your lady will
let her finger go over the furniture when you
finish. " See ! " she will show you her finger
marked with dust. Patience ! What a mighty
lesson for the youth ! You must not forget
to wash your stockings before you go to bed,
and hang them on a chair. How could we
afford two pair of stockings in our schoolboy
days ? What a farce we enacted in our first
encounter with an American family ! Even a
stove was a mystery to us. One of my friends
endeavoured to make a fire by burning the
kindling in the oven. Another one was on
the point of blowing out the gaslight. One
fellow terrified the lady when he began to take
off his shoes, and even his trousers, before
scrubbing the floor. It is true, however
fantastic it may sound. It was natural enough
for him, since he regarded his American clothes
as a huge luxury. Poor fellow ! He was
afraid he might spoil them. I rushed into my
Madam's toilet-room without knocking. The
American woman took it good-naturedly, as it
happened. She pitied our ignorance, but with-
out any touch of sarcasm. Japanese civilisa-
tion, if it was born in America, certainly was
born in her household — in some well-to-do
San Francisco family, rather than in Yale or
Harvard.

86

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

The work of " schoolboy," which I took up
with much enthusiasm, served for some time
as a dehghtful break in my American life;
but its monotony soon became unbearable,
and I decided to go on foot to Palo Alto, as
I thought (as in a Japanese proverb, ** The
children who live by the temple learn how to
read a sutra") I might learn something there.
I slipped out of my employer's house one
early morning from the window, as I was
afraid the lady would not let me go if I asked
my wages. When I reached the Stanford
University ground, it was near evening; I

called at the house of Prof. G , where my

friend was working while he attended the
lecture courses. I was permitted to stay with
him till I found some way to support myself.
Through the kindness of the wife of Prof.

G I got a job at Mrs. C 's to work

morning and evening, and by turns I found a
place at the Manzanita Hall (a sort of pre-
paratory school for Stanford), where I was
admitted to appear at the school for my service
in cleaning the classrooms and waiting on
table for the student-boarders. There were
less than twenty students then ; the work was
not heavy, but if I remember rightly, I re-
ceived no payment. I do not remember
n©w how long I stayed there, what knowledge

37

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

I picked up in the classroom; one thing I
remember is that I read Irving's Sketch Book
there for the first time, in which the descrip-
tion of Westminster Abbey incited my sudden
desire for England. The general influence of
Stanford, silent, not unkind, courteous, en-
couraging, that I felt from the buildings, the
surrounding view with trees, even the group
of students, was, I confess, far deeper than my
first impression of Harvard, or even Oxford of
England ; after all, the library and lectures are
not the main things. As I said, I worked
without payment at the Manzanita Hall ; I
began to feel uncomfortable in course of time,
with my heelless shoes and dirty coat. 1
decided to work at the Menlo Park Hotel,
Menlo Park, as a dish-washer, till 1 could put
myself in a respectable shape.

The work was not light ; I had to rise every
morning before four o'clock, and my work was
never finished till ten o'clock at night. It was
about the time when Japan declared war with
China ; what a delight it was to read the paper
with the battle news in my spare time ! When
the war was quite advanced, almost reaching
the zenith of interest as Li Hang Chang, the
appointed Chinese Special Envoy, had already
left home for Bakan to meet Ito, my mind

grew restless from a sudden burst of desire to

38

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

see my friends at San Francisco, and talk over
the war, if it were necessary, even to fight with
them. I dismissed myself from the hotel, and
hurried back again to the San Francisco News.
I thought I was quite rich, as I had more than
thirty dollars for my savings, while my com-
patriots at the office were in the same condi-
tion as before ; I could not help feeling sorry
for them, and then I bought a pair of shoes
for A, a new shirt for B, and played a philan-
thropist for a short time. When I awoke
from a few occasions of extravagance, I found
myself again penniless as my friends. The
paper needed somebody who could translate
from the English papers ; and I was asked to
help it, even for a short time. As I had no
particularly bright job before me, I consented
to stay ; under any circumstances, I thought
I must put my fingers into their former order,
as they had become swollen from the dirty
dish-water with much soda. Even in America
it is not easy to earn money.

Joaquin Miller was regarded most rever-
entially by Japanese as a sennin, or ** hermit
who lived on dews." His great personality, it
was said, was in his denying of the modern
civilisation ; his only joy of life was to raise
roses and carnations. I believe it was with
more than curiosity that I climbed up the hills

39

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

behind Oakland to see him at the " Heights,"
where he sang :

" Come under my oaks, oh, drowsy dusk !
The wolf and the dog ; dear incense hour,
When Mother Earth hath a smell of musk.
And things of the spirit assert their power —
When candles are set to burn in the West —
Set head and foot to the day at rest."

It was the ideal spot on earth with balmy air,
such a wonder of view at your feet ; I fell in
love with the place at once, and I thought I
could get plenty of the rest which was beyond
my reach during two years and seven months
that I had already spent in America. More
than the place itself, I fell in love with Mr.
Miller, whose almost archaic simplicity in the
way of living and speech was indeed prophet-
like; he said he would be glad to have me
stay with him. I decided to do so on the
spot.

He said that he had no lesson or teaching
to give me, or if he had any, it was about the
full value of silence, without the understanding
of which one could never read the true heart
of Mother Nature ; and the heart of Nature,
he said, was Love.

" Silence, Love — and simplicity," he ex-
claimed.

When I retired in the house right next to
40

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

his own to sleep that night, I secretly decided
that I would become a poet.

II

1 was hoeing round and watering the flowers
in the plum orchard at the ** Heights," when I
received a letter from Gelett Burgess, then the
editor of the Lark, the now famous, though
short-lived, California magazine, saying : "I
have several notices of your poems from the
Eastern papers, and your work has been very
well received." The July of 1896, when my
five English poems (let me call them poems)
were first printed by Mr. Burgess in the Lar^k,
was certainly the dawn of my new page of
American life ; with his letter my heart
jumped high in joy. Indeed, I confess that
the joy I felt then was the greatest of joys,
and I never felt anything like it again ; to
have it once in a lifetime may be said to be
lucky enough. Before I sent my poems to
the Lark, I submitted one poem to the editor
of the Chap Book, Chicago, who wrote, when
he printed it : " The current issue of the Lark
contains some few pages of verses by Yone
Noguchi, and I find that the pleasant oppor-
tunity I thought to have of first printing his

writing is denied me. Perhaps I am a little

41

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

envious." And the poem beginning, " Mystic
spring of vapour," which was published in the
Philistme in September, was bitterly attacked
by a certain Mr. Hudson, of Oakland, as a
plagiarism from Poe. I was a devout reader
of Poe's poems ; it was the only book, beside
the work of our famous kokku poet, Basho
Matsuo, and a book on Zen Buddhism by
Kochi, that I brought to the "Heights." My
name began to be known ; newspaper men of
San Francisco came up the hill to interview me.
It was the Examiiier that wished me to stand
before a camera ; alas, I had no decent white
shirt to wear then. I borrowed one from my
friend, which was two sizes too large ; I found,
when the picture was taken, that even my
clenched fist might easily go in at the neck.

I published my own attitude toward Hud-
son s attack in the following fashion : *' Let
critics say what they please ! Poetry is sacred
to me. It is not art for me, but feeling. My
poems are simply my own journal of feeling —
the footmark of my experience. I can stand
anything but deceiving myself. I am not sorry
a bit, if there be an exact correspondence in
shape. I am thankful to God for giving me
the moment when I felt the same thing with
Poe. I cannot understand why you could not

feel the same thing with Poe if you want to.

42

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

It is not poetry at all, if you must express
yourself in some other fashion when you think
of one thing."

When he again attacked me on " On the
Heights" in the September Lai^k, he made
himself a subject of laughter, even to the
editor of the Examiner, who said : ** The
occurrence of the word * window ' in the first
line of Noguchi's and the seventh line of the
quoted section from Poe is, of course, a damag-
ing affair for both, and when it is reinforced
by the damning fact that * beauty ' is mentioned
in the third verse of Noguchi and the fifth
verse of the quotation from Poe, the candid
reader must admit that the two writers spell
according to the same dictionary. It is to be
feared, however, that Poe's claims to originality
are not on a much better foundation than those
of Noguchi. Noah Webster had already pub-
lished all the words of The Slee'per before
Poe, and Dr. Johnson before Webster, and
still others before Dr. Johnson."

Most of the Eastern literary magazines did /
not take Hudson's attack seriously ; 1 was
defended by many of them, the Book Buyer,
for instance, who remarked : " He has origi-
nality enough, if that were the full equipment
of a great writer. Beauty and delicacy of
thought are in his work, and imagination to

43

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

spare. But the imagery is often so exotic
as to perplex, as when Oriental music falls
on Western ears. But he did not steal his
cadences from Poe, nor from anybody else."

I found in the various papers and weeklies
poems or other writings addressed to me,
mostly in kind and often humorous vein ; let
me quote one of them as a specimen :

YONE NOGUCHI
(To the tune of" He's No Farmer ")

" Yone !—

As critics lift their carping bray,

Pretend thy hair is full of hay,

Mixed S. Crane middlings, longs and shorts,

With other Poe its odds and orts,
And ravelin shreds — they also say :
Homer is not awake alway,
Shakespeare caught flukes i' his bright sword-play.

Wordsworth is solemn at his sports,
(He is, Yone !)

But thou, train ever round thy lay

Some fragrant wilding of the May :

Graft not its stem with borrowed thoughts.
Nor trim the spray — it bloom aborts —

For public, Publishers Pay :

Then blossoms, clustering thick thy bay,

Shall crown thee, Yone ! "

The death of the La7'k, after a brilliant

course of two years, was much lamented

through the country ; the Chap Book ended

44

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

its note on the passing of the Lark with the
following words : '* And now it is dead. Les
Jeunes, taken doubtless with an affection
similar to the gold fever of the Klondyke,
are striking out for the East, where the
nuggets of recognition and encouragement
are to be picked up in the fertile fields of
literature and art. Gelett Burgess and Ernest
Peixotto are in New York, Bruce Potter and
Florence Lundborg are headed toward Europe,
and * the Homeless Snail,' Yone Noguchi, alone
remains :

' Standing like a ghost in the smiling mysteries of the
moon garden.' "

Indeed, I was left alone at Miller's " Heights "
sadly or happily. It was happy to lie on the
top of the hill when the poppies covered it in
spring, where I often dreamed death would be,
if I could be buried in such a place overlooking
the bay (the Golden Gate), sweeter than life ;
it was happier still to rest by a brook in the
canyon, with whose song I could send my
mind far into the Unknown and Eternal.
My life of seclusion was not without a happy
break in meeting celebrities now and then.

My passion for wandering, that seemed to
have ceased temporarily its flight (I was quite
a traveller already in my boyhood at home),

45

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

began to blaze up again ; I felt it almost im-
possible not to heed the calling voice of trees,
hills, waters, and skies in the far distance. I
have read the romantic story of Goldsmith in
his vagabondising in European villages, with
only his beloved little flute ; and the travelling
note that was written by Basho, poet of moon
and wind, impressed my mind, which only
aspired to become a real poet. And the true
poetry is not in writing, but in the union with
nature. I decided to experience a "tramp
life " in poetical fashion ; I thought it was the
first step for my idea. I did not see at all the
hard side of it ; the romantic aspect of parting
with the world and society, the perfect freedom,
the having all airs and flowers on equal terms,
was brighter. It was the month of April when
I started on my lone pilgrimage (with a book
of poems instead of a holy staff) toward the
Yosemite Valley; my tramp life commenced
at Stockton, which I reached by a river boat
from San Francisco. I remember clearly, as
it were yesterday, that it was already dark, a
few stars sparkling in the high sky, as if a
guiding spirit for a pilgrim, when I passed
through Chinese Camp, the once famous place
I had read of in Harte's stories of a mining
camp. I felt extremely sad, the wind blowing
from behind, at not finding a right place to

46

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

sleep, and finally I camped under the trees,
by a brook whose silver song still remains in
my ears. I could not fall asleep because my
blanket was so light, and I remember I put
many little stones and twigs on it, that I
gathered under the starlight. It was the first
time that I felt such a great love in that light,
which 1 never felt before ; I thank my tramp
life, which revealed many new beauties of
nature, above all, how to appreciate it. I
wrote down my feeling of that night in The
Night Reverie in the Forest; in one part I
sang:

" O Repose, whose bosom harbours the heavenly dream-
ships, welcome me, an exiled soul !
Thou, Forest, where Peace and Liberty divide their

wealth with even a homeless convict.
Let me sleep in thine arm-boughs, safer far than a
king's iron castle guarded by mortal power ! "

Then at the ending part :

'' Ah Loneliness ! Loneliness — to whom a boatman of
God is the sole saviour on the vast Sea of Eternity !

I repose under the forest's arm-bough — if I awaken not
forever, pray, brother mortal,

Make my grave under the greenest grass and carve
these lines : ' Here sleeps a nameless Poet. ' "

I entered in the Courter Vale Road gra-
dually, first coming into contact with Cali-
fornia cedars, spruces, and pines. The season

47

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

was still too early, as there were few travellers
who had advanced into the valley; many
houses by the road were still unoccupied, and
consequently I could not find food and sleep
at the place I wished. Once I slept in a barn,
where I found no horse when I went to sleep.
At midnight I felt a queer warmth and occa-
sionally heard some biting sound, doubtless of
hay; but I was too sleepy to rise. In the
morning I found, to my surprise, I was sleep-
ing right between the four legs of a horse-
This and other incidents did not bring any
pleasure at that time, like to-day, when I feel
an almost tantalising delight in my reminis-
cent mood.

What a thrill of fear, which was not the
thing of our world, I felt in the Yosemite
Valley, as you can see in the first lines of my
song of night :

" Hark ! The prophecy-inciting windquake of the un-
fathomable concave of darkest Hell !
O, the God-scorning demon's shout against the truth-
locked gate of mighty Heaven ! "

What a sight of the falls reflected to the
low-hanging moon ! The tall trees looked no
other but the ghosts or spirits who gathered
and talked something wonderful and evil ; and

what a sound of water, besides that of the fall,

48

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

which dashed down the river ! I felt cold and
suddenly hungry, when I became conscious of
my sad being amid such an almost frightening
demonstration of Nature, particularly in the
night. I was kindly treated by the clerk or
manager of the Stoneman House, who needed
somebody to chop wood, as the hotel had
opened only a week before ; I was given good
food that night, and I even slept in a bed. I
stayed in the valley four days, during which I
chopped wood, with one Indian boy, for whose
brother I was taken by one person there ; I
took every chance to look around the valley as
much as I could. When I left the hotel, the
manager wished me to stay for the whole
summer; but wages and work were not my
aim. I left the valley hght-hearted, as I
entered. I took the train at Raymond on my
way to San Francisco, as I had some money

through the kindness of Mrs. S , that

dearest soul, to whom I dedicated my Yose-
mite book when it appeared.

My next, far longer tramp-journey in the
month of April 1898, was toward the south,
down to Los Angeles ; as I had decided that
I would chop wood for my dinner, and sleep
in a barn, I had only a few dollars for an emer-
gency, and a mishap that I encountered on the
first night robbed them away. I was sleeping in

49 D

THE STOEY OF YONE NOGUCHI

an empty wagon car, which I found near the
station of Ocean View ; it was rather hot and
uncomfortable ; I was obliged to take off my
trousers before lying down. But it was a
mistake, as I found when, my car moving to-
ward San Francisco at midnight, I hurriedly
grasped my trousers upside down, and all the
silver rolled away. I was glad, however, my
little razor and comb were safe in the pocket
of my coat ; I was no more a boy, as a trifling
moustache already began to bother me ; and I
had to have my toilet done before entering a
town, by the looking-glass of a stream I might
find. I wished to keep at least my appearance
of a gentleman tramp.

I left San Jose in the early morning for
Los Gatos, being given a chance to ride on a
wagon by a kindly old farmer. As it was the
latter part of April, both sides of the country
road were perfectly covered by the cherry-
blossoms in full glory. The morning freshness
mingled with the fragrance of the flowers ; as
I was high up in the wagon, I was looking
down the flat valley, and this unexpected
flower-viewing (it is the Spring custom that
Japanese keep at home) called my longing at
once to sing my mind. The beauty of the
cherry-blossom is not only Japan's ; and it
never happens in Japan to admire the thou-

50

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

sand and thousand trees in one spot. I have
the following in my diary of the journey :

" Santa Cruz, April 29th, — Yesterday even-
ing— a little before sunset — I crossed a long
tunnel. Half a mile long, some say. The
station-master did not believe me when I said
that I was going to cross the tunnel. How-
ever, he assured me that there was some one
hour before the next train. Enter did I.
What dampness in the tunnel I It were the
easiest thing to faint in it. A thievish hght
from the door, which was already small as a
morning star, finally disappeared. Alas ! Such
darkness ! I felt as if the darkness were an
animal and about to devour my flesh. Mon-
strous darkness ! I missed my footing and fell
in the ditches. * My God ! ' I exclaimed. I
crawled, my hands touching the railroad track.
Undoubtedly I might have been dead if I had
not had Faith — Faith that would come out at
the other side if I kept on. Oh, mighty
Faith ! Mother of hope ! Yes, Faith is Hfe ! . . . "

It was fortunate, perhaps, to find a Japanese
keeping a bamboo store or laundry shop, or
working on a farm, wherever I went along
the coast, who welcomed me, as my name was
very well known to him ; I was often begged
to stay, if possible, indefinitely. I was glad
that I could wash my stockings, or shirts

51

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

even, with hot water prepared by him ; he
would be pleased also if I served him by
writing an English letter or interpreting a
business transaction. I stayed more than any-
where else at Monterey, .where I learned the
mystery of the sea better than ever; I in-
scribed my name in Japanese on the wall of
the Carmel Mission, satisfied to find myself
the only inscriber.

I reached San Lucas one afternoon of a
certain day, feeling almost dead from hunger,
as I had only breakfast on that day. The
station-master directed me to a Japanese who
kept a little vegetable garden ; I found him
quite ill, but his welcome was cordial. I saw
plenty of charcoal fire burning to keep him
warm; I think now that it was from the
charcoal gas that I was suffocated and fell
flat on the floor. It is true I was lying as a
dead person till midnight, when the cold air
brought me to my senses. I was told when
I awoke that the sick man had had such
a trouble in sending a message to San Fran-
cisco of my death, or at least of my being
near to death. I understood the reason that
I surprised my friends at Los Angeles with
my presence a month later; I believe I was
then supposed already dead throughout the

Japanese colony of the coast. I thank the

52

SOME STORIES OF MY WESTERN LIFE

rain, the most gentle rain of Californian May,
that drove me into a barn at San Miguel
during two days, but made me study Hamlet
line after line, which I carried with me ; what-
ever I know about it to-day is from my read-
ing in that haystack.

I cannot forget San Louis Obispo, where I
entered under the bright moon, riding on the
wagon of some gypsies with whom I became
acquainted on the roadside; I parted from
them presently with the hope of meeting
again. I had not known before that it was a
Spanish town full of beautiful girls ; above all,
with such a sweet atmosphere which only be-
longs to a Latin race ; I observed that many
of the girls were sitting with their banjos by
the balconies, and singing serenades. When
I appealed to them at one house with my
hunger and tired feet, they stopped their
songs, and rushed into a kitchen to cook
something for me ; I believe that it was a sort
of festival in the town, as the joyous uproar
could not be mistaken. How those young
girls with such large black eyes and olive-
skinned oval faces, sympathised with me when
I told them I had walked so many miles on
that day I Nothing particular happened before
I reached Los Angeles in the beginning of

July, except my stay of one month at Santa

53

THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

Barbara, where I was picked up as a dish-
washer by some Eastern visitor, who had
settled there temporarily for health. I re-
member only one thing, that I made the
young lady of the house angry, who was evi-
dently a lover of poetry, particularly of Long-
fellow, as it seemed, by saying that he was
only a poet for such a stupid head like hers.

I was already in Chicago in 1900, writing
my own impression of that city for the Even-
ing Post there; and then my head further
turned eastward, to New York, and London
across the ocean.

54

Ill

JOAQUIN MILLER

I

I MUST go back to my nineteenth year to
write on Joaquin Miller from the beginning.
I heard his name first, I distinctly remember,
from my fellow-countryman, then a student at
Stanford, who dropped into the dirty kitchen
of Menlo Park Hotel (where I was tempo-
rarily employed as a dish-washer) to cheer me
up and also to have a secret bit of pie. The
poet's life amid the roses, quite high above the
cities and people (my friend told me as best
he could what he knew about him), made me
sadder when I compared it with my life, in
which my fingers grew all swollen, disfigured
from using soda in the dish-water ; and it was
about the time that I began to read English
poetry. But Joaquin Miller was dismissed
from my mind till five or six months later,
when I found myself again in San Francisco
and cast my lot with the office of the Soko
Shimbwi, a Japanese newspaper, for the second

time ; when I one day found Miller's name in

55

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

Webster's Dictionary, my reverence toward
him doubled at once. I do not remember
now to whom it was that I told of my great
despair of American life ; surely it was he that
suggested to me the home of Joaquin Miller,
the " Heights " he called the place, at the back
hill of Oakland, when I wished to find some
place to sleep and read without doing much
manual work. I was told by him to be sure
of Miller's great love of Japan and the
Japanese, and above all, of his eccentric way
of living; and he said further, I believe, that
he would doubtless gladly let me live with
him since some young Japanese had already
such an experience before. When 1 decided
to make my call on him, I took all the books
that I had, six or seven, excepting a copy of
Poe's poems as I was already his admirer, to
a certain second-hand bookshop to raise my
travelling expense.

The scene of my first meeting with Miller
floats most clearly, most sweetly before my
eyes as if it were only yesterday, although it
is now a matter of almost twenty years ago.
I know how I trembled when I stepped on
the somehow unsafe narrow wooden path or
bridge at the entrance, leading me directly to
his ridiculously small cottage; I believe I
should have run away from the sudden failing

56

JOAQUIN MILLER

JOAQUIN MILLER

of my courage (as 1 said before I was not yet
then fully nineteen) if a young girl, a Mexican
or half Negress, Miss Ahce as I found after-
ward (we were good friends during my stay at
the "Heights"), who had just stepped out of
the cottage, had not encouraged me with her
friendly smile. Joaquin Miller, who at once
reminded me of my imaginary picture of child-
hood days for a certain Tengu or Mountain
Elf with red long nose, whose supernatural
power made Yoshitsune Minamoto a great
swordsman in Japanese legend, stretched out
his hand from the bed (he lived practically in
a cottage of one room) when he saw me enter-
ing. I thought how romantically impressive
he looked. It was his habit, as I soon found
out, to ** loaf and invite his own soul " lying in
bed the whole forenoon; a silken skullcap
which he wore gave him the most interesting
touch of an older age. When I told him of
my desire in climbing up the hill, he exclaimed
" Welcome ! Welcome ! " Then he wished
me to accompany him to his old mother's to
dine together, when Miss Alice (a sweet soul
who, it is said, died some years ago somewhere
in Southern America) came and announced
dinner. On our way to Mrs. Miller's cottage,
which stood some one hundred yards up the

hill, Joaquin Miller picked abundantly the

57

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

roses white or red, which he scattered over the
large dinner table, exclaiming : " God bless
you 1 " I must not forget to tell you that he
wore top-boots and, wonder of all, a bear-
skin over his shoulders even while eating; a
red crepe sash was tied round his waist most
carelessly. His dress was of corduroy. But
I noticed that there was a large diamond ring
on a finger of his right hand which threw an
almost menacing brilliancy. He was six feet
tall ; his white beard fully covered his breast.
Had I ever seen before, I asked myself, any
more striking person than this Miller, the
Poet of the Sierras ? Indeed I accepted him
without any question for the very symbol of
romance and poetry of which my young mind
often dreamed; I congratulated myself that
the most happy accident had brought me to
the right spot where my real soul would
surely grow. What pleased me best, I con-
fess, was Miller's manner in calling me " Mr.
Noguchi," as it was the first occasion to hear
myself so addressed since my arrival in Cali-
fornia; hitherto I had been a Charley or a
Frank according to the employer's fancy.
When this unexpected joy of mine grew
deeper and I became, in spite of myself,
suddenly silent and solemn, the old lady,

now dead for many years (Miller once play-

58

JOAQUIN MILLER

fully exclaimed, when I remarked that a
Japanese sparrow in our proverb did not
forget to dance even in its hundredth year :
" Why, my mother is that Japanese bird ! ")
slyly looked upon me from the other side of
the table and even winked ; now that wink of
hers might have been her apology for her
sons eccentricity, mistaking my silence for
accusation. Never did I think Miller was
particularly eccentric, never even once during
my long stay with him; he was the most
natural man ; and his picturesqueness certainly
was not a crime. When Mrs. Miller began
to say something, the poet exclaimed offhand
that eating was a sacred service ; and said,
** Mother, you talk too much ; mother, mother,
you keep quiet. Silence 1 Again silence !
Silence helps your digestion. Eat slowly, all
of you, think of something higher, and be
content ! " The dinner was the simplest ever
I ate in an American household, but the
most satisfactory.

That evening I descended the hill again for
the newspaper office at San Francisco, where
I had to bid my goodbye to my friends ; and
I thought that I would buy a pair of top-boots
if I could raise money enough somewhere,
even though the bearskin were out of reach.
When I left the city for the " Heights " the

69

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

next day, I carried with me the Hokku poems
by Basho Matsuo and a book of the Zen
philosophy of Kochi Zenji, besides my beloved
Poe's poems ; it was already evening when I
reached Miller's after leaving the Fruitvale car
at Dimond as I had before, with the lightest
heart like that of a breeze or bird. I found
Miller hoeing round the garden and water-
ing the roses. He was singing something;
when I asked him what he sang, he said it
was Omar's following verse :

''Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday ? "

It was the first time I heard the name of

Omar, on whom, one year later, Mr. Garnet

wrote a song for the Lark, a little California

magazine, and dedicated it to me. I confess

that I soon began to assume the rustic role

of that Persian poet.

Oh that unforgettable first night at the

** Heights," when I slept indeed far nearer

to the stars ; yes, I slept perfectly surrounded

by those steadfast stars of whom Keats was

thinking on his deathbed. There were the

stars everywhere, the stars in the skies and

the stars on the earth; who could tell, I

thought, where the lights left off and the

stars began ? Really a thousand lights of

60

JOAQUIN MILLER

some ten villages below under our feet
magically turned to stars in night's misty
air. I was glad that my eyes suddenly
began to open to what was good and beauti-
ful in Nature. And what a dawn and sun-
rise I observed next morning! It is not
too much to say that one lived partly in
the clouds at this place; the mists, rolling
above the towns, will soon lift, rifting little
by little, and presently many a church spire
will be pointing up; and pray, look down
over the San Francisco Bay, nay, the
mobile floor of dustless silver I And another
wonder shall be waiting for you at evening.
I raised my head and looked down through
the western window of my httle cottage
attached to Miller's; where my eyesight
reached far away was the gate of the Bay,
and lo ! there the golden sun was sinking
heavily down through that gate, as if a
mighty king or poet at his departure for
"Far Beyond." When I was told after-
ward by Miller that this was the very place
where John C. Freemont, the path-finder,
once pitched his tent and was inspired to
give the name of Chrysopylae or Golden
Gate, the place became thrice more romantic.
I was pleased it was the month of May
with the deepening shadows of the acacia

61

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

trees; one large bamboo chair under the
tree by the narrow entrance bridge, at the
front of the cottage or cottages, dehghted
me, as I thought I could freely play there
a Hindoo monk in meditation, perhaps the
Dharuma who, it is said, sat still during
nine long years before he arose with his
new religion, on whom I wrote :

*' Let us return to the elements and dusts.
Let us in dust find our own salvation !
O bit of dust, Dharuma, O body of light ! "

How I thought Miller was unpoetical, even
despised his cruelty when one or two years
later he cut down that large acacia tree.
What music of the birds at the "Heights"
in May! How delighted I was with the
simple song of the meadow lark, even when
it could not aspire like Shelley's skylark.
You will see here butterflies passing by
the cottage in tremendous haste, some drop-
ping in to rest on the table for awhile; and
you will be frightened by the sudden sight
of a squirrel popping out from the most
unexpected corner in the purple spring air.
When the months advanced toward the
summer, the hills were covered by the
flowers singing and laughing, their treasures
spilled far up and far down everywhere. One

62

JOAQUIN MILLER

morning Miller brought to me a bunch of
poppies ("The golden poppy is God's gold"
is Miller's song), saying that they were the
State flower by act of the Legislature; I
exclaimed : *' Such a tiny flower for such
a big State!" Miller said then: "The
sweetest flowers grow closest to the ground ;
you must not measure Nature by its size : if
there is any measure, it will be that of
beauty ; and where is beauty there is truth.
First of all, you must know Nature by your-
self, not through the book. It would be
ten thousand times better to know by your
own knowledge the colour, the perfume and
the beauty of a single tiny creeping vine in
the valley than to know all the Rocky Moun-
tains through a book ; books are nothing.
Read the history written on the brows of
stars ! "

I confess that it was my disappointment,
however, not to find books at Miller's place ;
not only in my cottage but also in Miller's
sanctum or Holy Grotto, as I used to call it,
I hardly saw anything that might pass for a
book. When I found a book or books in my
cottage, they were nailed high up near the ceil-
ing ; it might have been perhaps Miller's idea
to make them stand for decoration. Although

he lighted neither lamp nor candle at night

63

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

(" My life is like the life of a bird," Miller
often declared), and professed he would awaken
when the sun rose, I could not conform my-
self with his rule ; I got a few candles to read
the books which I brought down from the
walls. They were all Miller's old books; it
was in this way that I made my first acquaint-
ance with his early poems or what-not. But
what interested me most was a little book of
his reminiscences in which I read how he ap-
peared in London with his poems, how he
failed with many other English publishers and
finally with Murray, whom he had kept for the
last (because he felt sure that Byron's publisher
would be his) ; in this bit of autobiography he
writes :

" The great Murray took me upstairs when
I told him I had a book all about the great
West of America, and there he showed me
many pictures of Byron — Byron's mother
among the rest — a stout, red-faced woman with
awful fat arms and low black curls about a
low narrow brow.

" I ventured to say she looked good-natured.

" * Aye, now, don't you know she would
shy a poker at your head, don't you know ? '
And the great Murray wagged his finger in her
face as he said this, quite ignoring me, my
presence or my opinion. Then he spun about

64

JOAQUIN MILLER

on his heel to where I stood in the background,
and, taking sight at me behind his long, lean
finger, jerked out the words : ' Now, young
man, let us see what you have got.'

** I drew forth my first born of London town
and laid it timidly in his hand. He held his
head to one side, flipped the leaves, looked in,
jerked his head back, looked in again, twisted
his head like a giraffe, and then lifted his long
finger.

" ' Aye, now, don't you know poetry won't
do ? Poetry won't do, don't you know ? '

** * But will you not read it, please ? '

** * No, no, no. No use, no use, don't you
know.'

'' I reached out my hand, took the despised
sheets, and in a moment was in the street,
shaking my fist at that house now and then as
I stopped in my flight and turned to look back
with a sort of nervous fear that he had fol-
lowed me."

But when he published soon afterward his
first London book at his own expense, the
success was most instant ; and all the praise
upon those Songs of the Sierras in the pages
of the Athenceum, the Academy, th^ Saturday
Review, the Westminster Review, and many
others were quite uniform. The following,
it is said, was what the Spectator selected

65 E

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

to show the real presence of no common power
in Miller :

•*' I lay in my hammock : the air was heavy
And hot and threatening ; the very heaven
Was holding its breath, and bees in a bevy
Hid under my thatch ; and birds were driven
In clouds to the rocks in a hurried whirr
As I peered down the path for her ;
She stood like a bronze bent over the river,
The proud eyes fixed, the passion unspoken.
When the heavens broke like a great dyke broken.
Then ere I had fairly time to give her
A shout of warning, a rushing of wind.
And the rolling of clouds and a deafening din.
And a darkness that had been black to the blind.
Came down as I shouted, ' Come in ! Come in !
Come under the roof, come up from the river,
As up from the grave — come now or come never ! '
The tasselled tops of the pines were as weeds.
The torn woods rocked like to lakeside reeds,
And the world seemed darkened and drowned forever."

And I had once an occasion, when I lived
with him, to read a copy of Fronde's letter
to Alfred Graves concerning Miller's book,
which I found under the dusts of old papers
in his cottage ; the historian wrote :

** I opened it, expecting nothing, and was
at once struck with its unusual character.
Instead of speculative maunderings or un-
solvable problems or vague aspirations after
a state of things which if realised would

m

JOAQUIN MILLER

induce me for one to blow my brains out,
so destitute the earth would appear, I find
the ring of genius, human life and human
passion of which the very sounds had almost
been forgotten."

Then he added : " Do not compare him to
Walt Whitman. You might as well compare
a young half- broken Arab to a circus piebald
broken loose from the troupe and gone mad."
(It is rather amusing to think whether Froude,
if he were living to-day, would say the same
thing.)

II

Although I generally agree with the Times
critic's comparison of Joaquin Miller with
Gordon of Australia (** These two poets were
set on horseback, and they rode up the slopes
of Parnassus until the loftier steeps cast
them back," is the ending phrase of his recent
interesting article on Miller), this American
poet I used to know in 1895-9 was not
a melodramatic centaur on swift galloping
hooves in song, but the singer of *' a brother
soul in some sweet bird, a sister spirit in
a rose," not the maker of loud-voiced ballads
like the tide of a prairie fire or the marches
of the Sierra mountains, but the dove-meek
poet of love and humanity which, in Miller's

67

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

words, grow best and sweetest in silence.
It is singular enough that he could not
forget, even when he sang on silence as in
the following, his former love of exuberance,
colour, and concert rhythm :

" Aye, Silence seems some maid at prayer,
God's arm about her when she prays
And where she prays and everywhere.
Or storm- strewn days or sundown days —
What ill to Silence can befall
Since Silence knows no ill at all ?

Vast Silence seems some twilight sky
That leans as with her weight of stars
To rest, to rest, no more to roam.
But rest and rest eternally.
She loosens and lets down the bars.
She brings the kind- eyed cattle home,
She breathes the fragrant field of hay
And heaven is not far away."

I soon found out, when I made my own
home with him, that my Japanese tempera-
ment and thought should be kept far apart
from his own, and I must live and grow in-
dependently like a lone star in solitude; to
make a Miller out of myself, I thought at
once would be absurd and foolish. When he
declared on my very first day at the ** Heights "
that he had nothing to teach me, I took such
a language itself for a great teaching and

reverence to another's individuality ; and when

68

i

JOAQUIN MILLER

he proposed that we should Hve in different
cottages communicating as little as possible,
I thought that he too, like a Japanese Buddha
monk, a student of Silence's sigh and mystery,
knelt before the sad shrine of Solitude with
the fire of faith burning within. I admired
him when he stood, to use the phrase of my
poem, as one scorning the swords and wanton
menace of cities (how he hated to appear in
town !) ; and he was so pleased to see me,
again to use the phrase of my poem, a victor
of Life and Silence upon the " Heights." As
1 said before, I spent with him four long
years ; but how little we spoke to each other
during those years. Even when we went
together to the canon to cut trees or build a
bridge, or hunt a quail for Mrs. Miller's
breakfast (we often returned carrying only
one or two English sparrows), or when we
went together to plant a tree under mists or
rain at the back hill, or picked together the
plums (Miller had a plum orchard), or watered
together the garden roses, I strictly observed
his rule of ** No debating of any sort " ; but
when his spirit moved to talking on Nature,
he talked on her economy, and said : " Nature
wastes nothing — nothing; least of all does
Nature waste time. And she is never in
haste. Remember to go slowly and dili-

69

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

gently toward the stars. Silence ! And no
debating there ! What a saving of time ! "

I never asked him, not even once, what
was his art of poetry, or what methods he
had ; it would be certainly futile to think you
might study or even mention poetry when you
lived here at the ** Heights," where, as I wrote
once:

*^ My feeling was that I stood as one
Serenely poised for flight, as a muse
Of golden melody and lofty grace."

Suppose you lay down, with your face toward
the Bay of the Golden Gate, upon the highest
spot of the " Heights " covered by the poppies
and buttercups in May, perhaps near the
large stone monument under which Miller is
now sleeping (I bought the white paint,
when the monument was finished in 1897,
and inscribed by Miller's order the words, *' To
the Unknown " on a little stone by its side) ;
when Keats' last words, that he already
seemed to feel the flowers growing over him-
self, come to your mind, I believe that you
would be glad to be kissed by Death and say :
" I see already the butterflies beaming over
my head." Suppose again the mists (how
Miller hated to use the word " fogs ") march-
ing from the oceans like the ghost-battalions,
took possession of the *' Heights " some winter

70

JOAQUIJSr MILLER

morning; it would be the day when my
Japanese mind always entered into our mytho-
logy, and I even felt as if I were the first god,
Izanami, standing on the ** Floating Bridge
of Heaven," before the creation. Again on
such a morning I used to hear Miller's reci-
tation of Columbus, his best poem by general
consent, in which his voice, as the word of
the Admiral in that poem, leapt like a leaping
sword :

" Sail on ! Sail on ! Sail on ! And on ! "

Oh sail on? And where? Why, we had
only to sail on to the home of poesy.

To live in poetry is ten times nobler than
merely to write it; to understand it well is
certainly far more divine than to speak it on
the tongue. If there ever was a poet who
fully lived or practised poetry, it was that
Joaquin Miller, even though he may not have
been a great poet of words (and I am no fit
person to speak on his written poems as I am
so different from him) ; and he sufficiently
proved the fact of his living in poetry at the
"Heights" as God's gardener as he pleased
to call himself. It was his hope to build a
City Beautiful ; he failed, doubtless, if that
City meant the communion or fellowship of
men. But I think that he tried his best in

71

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the building and was even successful as far as
his part only was concerned.

Once we talked on Japan and things
Japanese ; our talk came to the subject of the
cherry-tree. He said :

** Don't you know that the Lord God
planted a garden eastward in Eden wherein He
caused to grow everything that is pleasant to
the sight and good for food ? Observe that
the tree pleasant to the sight comes first !
Indeed it comes first ! And the trees good for
food are considered last. It is happy to know
that of all the thousand of famous Japanese
cherry-trees there is not one that bears a
cherry that even a bird would eat. The
Japanese cherry-trees are all and only pleasant
to the sight. That is really fine."

And such is the keynote of his way of
living and also of the building of the City
Beautiful ; his thirty years' patience and earn-
ing were gladly given to the " Heights," whose
original state, I am sure, would have been a
forgotten bit of waste.

When Miller entrusted me to arrange his
old writings printed in papers and magazines
which he happened to preserve, I used my
wisdom to copy out the best and striking
passages in a little book, in which to-day I
find the following:

72

JOAQUIN MILLER

** I was once riding alone over the mountains
of Durango, in Northern Mexico, when I
was overtaken by what I thought to be a
band of robbers. There was no escaping them
— there was but one mountain road climbing
up the back of the great, steep, rugged moun-
tain ; and so I did the best I could — joined
them and fell into conversation with the leader,
half expecting all the time to be murdered.

** At last, as we climbed the lofty summit
and looked down over the rich valley, with its
cool waters winding through it, this black,
hard-looking Mexican reined his mule, lifted
his hat, and, looking over the valley, ex-
claimed : ' Que Hermosa ! ' * How beautiful ! '
I felt no fear after that. We slept together
that night; and he told me, this man who
could not read, many pretty things for my
books."

Miller often remarked that one who had
eyes to see beauty was always truthful ; where
he said truth he justly meant beauty ; and
again when he said beauty, it would not be
much wrong to say that he meant plain common
sense. He declared : ** Why, the true poetry
is nothing but the common sense. Truth,
beauty and again truth — the right heart ! No
poet can create or destroy one particle of truth
or beauty or common sense, any more than he

73

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

can create or destroy a particle of gold. He
can only give it a new form, garment it with
splendour, and set it in a new light. Were I
to try to define poetry, I should say that
poetry is the divinely beautiful woman truth
(that is beauty and plain common sense
in Miller's understanding), gorgeously, yet
modestly and most perfectly gowned. There-
fore where there is poetry, there is light, again
there is joy."

I decided from the beginning when I first
climbed the hill, to pay him with my service,
to speak plainly, for my board and room at the
** Heights " ; so I was pleased to make coffee in
the morning and cook his dinner when he was
not dining with his mother. To cook outside,
when the weather was fine with the so-called
Italian sky, over the camp fire, by a little brook
which always reminded me of Tennyson's
poem, was a perfect delight. It was while I
was blowing the fire or peeling the potatoes or
onions that I was often frightened by unex-
pected thoughts and fancies. The cooking
was simple ; I had to boil a lump of beef, that
is when we had it, in a large iron pot for two
hours by Miller's direction. He never said a
word even when I cooked badly, provided I
allowed him to season the broth; he always
remarked that Longfellow, Lowell, and all the

74

JOAQUIN MILLER

others loved high seasoning as he. It was
Miller's work, when we had to dine on the
table under the rose bushes, to place a linen
cloth over it; he would pick up a few little
stones to weigh down the cloth, when winds
might blow. When he brought out his claret
bottle, it was the time when he wished to stay
by the table for two or three hours, our usual
dinner time at the ** Heights " or this Garden
of Eternity.

My Japanese mind was glad that Miller
was kind to his mother; he served her reve-
rently, saying, '* Mother is first." Such a
devotion, I thought, had a firm foundation
not so much in the blood impulse as in his
recognition of Life's hardest battle which this
staunch German woman ever fought (what a
suffering, what patience she must have under-
gone since the day when she took her family
to Oregon from Indiana in Miller's thirteenth
year) ; she was the soul who inspired him with
the song called the Bravest Battle, in which
he sang :

" Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars,
She fights in her walled-up town —
Fights on and on in the endless wars,
Then silent, unseen — goes down."

I remember that more than once I was asked

by Miller, when he returned home with many

75

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

pieces of gold coin from San Francisco where
he sold his writings, to take some of those
glittering things to Mrs. Miller even at night ;
that was partly, I believe, from a desire to
prove to her that he too could make money
when he wished. Miller brought back a few
small real nuggets chained to his watch from
the Klondyke ; it was his first act to present
one of them to his mother.

Those four years I spent at the " Heights "
were the hardest of my American life, as I
often depended on the generosity of my
Japanese friends even for my car fares. Since
I had no money when I had to appear in
San Francisco, I was frequently obliged to
walk five or six miles to Oakland where one
of my friends was washing dishes in a certain
family. I could not pay to have my hair cut, so
I let it grow freely ; the people did not know
the real condition when they laughed, saying
that I was assuming a Milleresque affectation
or pose. Once Miller called on me at a dirty
Japanese boarding-house of San Francisco
where I was temporarily staying for my purpose
to read the books at the city library (there 1
read Francis Thompson for the first time) ;
when he saw that I was washing my worn-out
cotton stockings, he went out and bought me
two pairs of decent woollen things. That was

76

JOAQUIN MILLER

the only occasion I received anything from
Miller ; not one cent passed between us during
the long four years. I began to write poems
from my second year at the " Heights " ;
Miller's canon (by the way his ground covered,
it was said, some seventy acres), where Bryant's
Thanatopsis always came to my mind, was
my favourite retreat ; from my mad desire to
lay my soul to the heart of Nature as nakedly
as possible, I carried my blankets under the
trees of the canon and slept there night after
night in the month of July. It was in those
nights that Miller often made his presence at
the place to make himself assured of my safety,
and brought for me at such an occasion some-
thing to eat as I might have been hungry. He
watched carefully, but after his own fashion,
over my welfare, as once a San Francisco
paper remarked, as if a mother lion after a
baby lion.

The '* Heights " was God's property (using
Miller's words), so that any picnic party had
all the freedom of the place ; it was our custom,
when they had gone, to go round and pick up
all the paper napkins and dirty baskets which
they left behind. The friend-visitors were not
few ; Miller was often obliged to shut his door
lest his peace and thought be disturbed ; but
the people who were so fortunate to strike the

77

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

hours of his leisure and good humour into the
bargain, would have the pleasure of hearing
his Indian song, which was the prayer for rain,
and it was my work, when the song began, to
turn the pipe hidden under the roof of my
cottage to make the water fall from above,
and make Miller exclaim that his prayer was
answered. Saturday was his market day, when
he went down the hill to San Francisco or
Oakland to buy one week's provisions ; while
he was away, I used to clean his cottage or
sanctum. I wrote down this our pastoral lives
at the " Heights" in the Ameiican Diary of a
Japanese Girl, I as Miss Morning Glory, and
Miller as the Poet Heine. I have the follow-
ing on a certain day of that playful book :

** I volunteered to clean his holy grotto.

"The little cottage brought me a thought
of one Jap sage who lived by choice in a ten-
foot -square mountain hut. The venerable
Mr. Chomei Kamo wrote his immortal I'en-
foot- square Record. A bureau, a bed, and
one easy-chair — everything in the poet's abode
inspires repose — occupy every bit of space in
Mr. Heine's cottage. The wooden roof is
sound enough against a storm. A fountain is
close by his door. Whenever you desire you
may turn the screw and hear the soft melody

of rain."

78

JOAQUIN MILLER

*' That's plenty. What else do you covet ?

" The closetlessness of his cottage is a symbol
of his secretlessness. How enviable is an
open-hearted gentleman ! Women can never
tarry even a day in a house without a closet.
He never closes his door through the year.

" A piece of wire is added to his entrance at
night. He would say that would keep out
the tread of a dog and a newspaper reporter.

" Oh such a dust !

" I swept it.

"But I thought philosophically afterward,
why should people be so fussy with the dust,
when things are but another form of dust ?
What a far-away smell the dust had ! What
an ancient colour ! "

III

I saw him for the last time at the
" Heights " in 1904 on my way home from
New York ; as it was still in the time of the
Russia- Japan War, we had much talk over the
affair; he was so enthusiastic with Japan's
victory. And he read to me many poems on
Japan he had written ; he was pleased when I
suggested to him a book of collaboration
under the title of Japan of Sword and Love,
On its appearance in Tokyo (1905) a critic of

79

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the Chronicle, Kobe, used his bitter words of
accusation, not on the poems but on Miller's
article, the Little Brown Men of Nippon,
which formed a sort of appendix ; it is not
worth while to dwell on Miller's absurdity, for
which the critic had his own basis, but he
finished up the review with the following
words :

" But our readers have probably had enough
by this time of Mr. Joaquin Miller, and will
begin to have serious doubts of his sanity.
His statements are not worth serious con-
sideration, and they would not receive notice
from us were it not that Mr. Yone Noguchi,
himself a Japanese, prints such an effusion
and lets its absurdities go forth to the world
without question. He must be perfectly well
aware that there is scarcely a sentence in the
article which Mr. Miller has written which is
not false either in actual statement or in
implication, and yet he permits it to appear in
a book published by himself as if Mr. Miller's
phrensy were a sober statement of facts re-
lating to Japan. Is it claimed that Joaquin
Miller may properly play fast and loose with
truth because he is classed as a poet ? "

Then 1 duly wrote a letter to the editor of

the paper ; in part I said :

"It is one of the dangers they voluntarily
80

JOAQUIN MILLER

meet, that they set their critical eyes only on
the details and perfectly forget to see what
Truth is hidden behind. I used to be de-
lighted with the late Whistler's a la Japonaise
pictures, which were merely a confusion of
absurdities as Japanese pictures, but revealed
his interesting personaUty and at the same
time his own point of view. And Mr. Miller
always exaggerates things. But his ex-
aggeration is poetical. Only he puts his own
thoughts in the most interesting way. And
his telling things is always interesting, how-
ever groundless. And his personality which
runs through his writing seems to me quite
remarkable. I value his point of view. He
may mislead the superficial readers involun-
tarily, but the profound people who do enjoy
thoughts more than facts will be given some
good points."

Suppose, what then, if the following, for
instance, is a groundless even false statement :

'* On almost every corner of the great
thoroughfare is set a great earthern jar with
dippers, ice and tea. Here old and young,
mostly the children to and from school, help
themselves. I know nothing more beautiful
than a group of these little flower-pots tipping
up to the big decorated and highly coloured
jar of iced tea to help one another, the biggest

81 F

THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

little boy, cap in one hand and dipper in the
other, helping the lesser ones. He gives
twice to each one. And if a little sister in
sandals and flower-like silk wrapper is of
the party, he gives her an extra bow and a
smile that is as beautiful as it is sincere. The
city appoints the place for these tea-jars, but
they are kept replenished by venerable parties,
mostly kindly old women, who remain entirely
unknown save to the authorities."

I am glad that we published that little
book of poems together, since it contains
Miller's At Vespers in Tokyo with the follow-
ing poetical lines somewhere :

" Of all fair lands to look upon.
To feel, to breathe, at Orient dawn,
I count this baby land the best,
Because here all things rest and rest
And all men love all things most fair
And beautiful and rich and rare ;
And women are as cherry-trees
With treasures laden, brown with bees.

Of all loved lands to look upon

Give me this loved land of Nippon,

Its bright, brave men, its maid at prayer.

Its peace, its carelessness of care.

A mobile sea of silver mist

Sweeps up for morn to mount upon ;

Then yellow, saffron, amethyst —

Such changeful hues has blessed Nippon!

See but this sunrise then forget

JOAQUIN MILLER

All scenes, all suns, all lands save one
Just matin sun and vesper sun ;
This land of inland seas of light ;
This land that hardly recks of night."

Certainly they have an equally weird swing
of charm that we find in Whistler's a la Japon-
aise pictures.

He was an idealist and a dreamer after his
own picturesque way; since the literature of
to-day, as some one pleases to remark, is per-
haps the literature of Shaw and Masefield,
Joaquin Miller belongs to the former age, when
the quest of reality was not so important.

83

IV

CHICAGO (1900)

Now, after such an incessant ride of three
days and nights from a boy town on the
Pacific coast, I am here for a little time to
study the great Chicago.

Chicago ! What do I feel, do you ask ?
I feel really, as if I was taken by a devil
to the City of Men, far beyond reach of
mountain or river. It acted on me as a great
dream of surprise; that tremendous railroad
train took my breath away completely. Do
you know I am a shy, without-knowledge-
of-the-world poet — a little useless poet one
hundred years late, using myself to dream
in solitude ! I kept me quiet as a star of
spring night, I was breathing in indolence.

Now, when the devil, the great overland
train, fled with me over 2000 miles during
only a few days — how in the world can I
be without excitement, without losing my-
self?

84

CHICAGO

Please let me find repose and some fresh
water. Is it impossible to secure me a pure
water as in California? A thick sediment
of mud or sand at the bottom of the glass
is no harm, you say? Chicago water is
horrible.

Did I recover my breath and set my ideas
in correct order; what should I say first
on Chicago ?

Look ! The Chicagoans are all alive ; in-
deed, they are rushing on like a storm ; they
are jumping in clanging street cars. I saw here
for the first time in my life such a dangerous
procession of street cars — cars above my head,
cars under my feet, cars everywhere, in this
great city. Yes, sir, no one is sleeping in
Chicago ; no one is dying in Chicago. Chi-
cago is the wonder, the City of Men ; not
a city of women, not a city of nature, of
course.

Do you ask me if men interest me more
than birds or trees? You want me to say
that what interests me most is human nature,
don't you ? Yes, I find new interest in
people since I came to the City of Men
— Chicago.

Hello, my dear San Francisco; I am a
Chicago boy now ! Good-bye, my friends on
the Pacific coast! Pray, let me be bold

85

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

enough to speak truth : Cahfornia — thank
God I could get out of Cahfornia — San
Francisco, to speak more accurately, is simply
an insane asylum. Chicago is a crazy city
also as I see.

Chicago women — I speak of course only of
the thousands of unfortunate whom need or
madness keeps daily in the streets and offices
downtown. These, I observe curiously, have,
it would appear, no perfect balance. How
is it possible to grow wise, or gentle, or
serene, when they are talking loud all day,
raising their voices in competition with the
roar of the city's thousand strident voices ? If
two are together, always they are talking —
never silent. They make such a mad noise in
meeting as do morning sparrows hunting a
breakfast. They do not know that peace
and quiet are verily necessary to make any-
thing grow; flowers do not grow well in
the noiseful city, but they need the peace
of the country ; the flowers themselves keeping
silence, of course, and it is exactly the same
with human beings. They might say, how-
ever, that they are making practice to go
to the platform of woman suffrage.

I said that San Francisco is simply an
insane asylum. Worse than that, her people
have made a science of robbery ; they would

86

CHICAGO

even ** steal the eyes out of a running horse."
They are misunderstanding the meaning of
" go-aheadism," which is the true American
pride, as they are misunderstanding the true
character of liberty. They are amuck with
the weapons of power. It is a dangerous
business to hand a butcher's knife to a
maniac.

San Francisco gave me, doubtless, some
happy hours. She kept me many a year
with three things. What a glory ! What a
grandeur 1 You stand facing the Pacific
Ocean at the Cliff' House, and listen to the
mighty songs of the greatest organist, the
youngest and oldest minstrel for man and
truth ! That ocean's deepest shadowy songs
are eternal inspiration, heavenly messages, the
outpouring of the power of God. What a
pity — how useless the ocean singing day and
night such grand songs to the vulgar Ameri-
can, you might think I The vulgar Ameri-
can is the worst person in the world, being
deaf and blind to nature. How long would
the ocean, you might wonder, sing for a man
who was dead a long time ago ?

How long would the ocean continue to sing
for Truth that had departed from the world ?
What a shame to have the divine ocean facing
the nasty advertisement of '* The Girl from

87

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

Paris," or of some one's beer ! It is a disgrace,
San Franciscans, which you must correct.
The tasteless advertisements merely spoil the
beauty of the natural scenery. The Japanese
Government gave a wise judgment when it
forbade to post advertisements at the beauti-
ful Higashi Yama, Kyoto, in the time the
National Exposition was held.

The Americans carry their business atmos-
phere wherever they go; in their footsteps
always they leave behind the unagreeable
smell of commerce; they are like one who
scatters around some ill odour.

I myself, however, have had many a glori-
ous hour with the ocean, laying me on the
graceful shore : what a joy it was to fall in
sleep hearing the simple, great, honest mascu-
line lullaby of that ocean !

The San Francisco girls sting you often as
a wasp ; they have the grace and small waist
of the wasp. Their golden hair is dyed in the
everlasting sunshine and the freshest air ; their
eyes are fallen stars of dreamy summer night ;
their footsteps are light and soft as the flut-
tering wing of the morning butterfly; they
are so glad to show their well-shaped shoes
and slender ankles by raising daintily their
skirts. How happy I felt mingUng among
them I I was perfectly intoxicated with tUeu'

88

CHICAGO

beautiful faces as with wine. Their sharp,
melodious voice was a queen's command to
me.

I became tired with them all; I needed
change. I left the Pacific coast.

But how long can I stand with this
Chicago? Only God knows.

I tell you, oh how sad I felt not seeing any
star at the night of my arrival ! Stars are not
kind to Chicago.

If the most noisy place is hell — surely
Chicago must be hell. The only quiet thing
I have seen in Chicago is the water of the
Lake of Michigan.

Chicago is the city of cars and wagons.
Chicago is the city of high buildings — did I
expect to see a twenty-story-high-building in
my life, I who being a Japanese used to living
in a ridiculously small house, like a bird's
home ? Chicago is the city of dusts, smoke and
littered streets. Certainly there are plenty of
chances for negroes to make fortunes polishing
shoes and dusting coats.

Chicago is the city of dirty creatures ; there
are many ragged, barefooted boys in and out
and through the crowded lanes of trade, the
human street-sparrows. Chicago is the city
of pig killing and pork packing — the Chica-
goans ought to be fat with the native

89

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

production, the greasy pork, but on the
contrary they are rather thin but firm in
construction. They are not so handsome as
the Cahfornians ; their complexion is not fair,
their hands and feet are large.

One thing, however, that strikes me most
forcibly in walking on the streets of Chicago
is the total absence of stupid-looking faces —
there is not even one sleepy mortal, I tell you.
How foolishly the Japanese look in brown
skin and dreamy eyes 1 Brown itself is the
colour of melancholy and stupidity; but it
shows some sweetness and pleads guilty to
contentment. Brown is like night. The
white-skinned Americans are like the day ;
they are the people of hard working, as the
daytime is the time of work. The Orientals
are the people of rest and dreams.

The Americans — that means the Chica-
goans, since Chicago is the typical city of
this great republic of riches and business —
are nothing if they do not work hard, as the
clock is nothing if it do not move. The
Chicagoans were born to work hard ; even
beggars — lazy enough to beg — in Chicago
handle a music machine.

Oh, what a feverish activity ! The Chica-
goans are never still, never pause to think ;

they are not at rest. Even when they are

90

CHICAGO

sitting they must be on the move ; they talk
loud on modern topics — on flying machines
or the elopement of a society belle. Look
at the rocking-chair habit of Americans — a
part of their scheme of perpetual motion,
nowhere else so nearly achieved !

Why do the Chicagoans work so hard?
For happiness ? I hardly believe they are
working for happiness, but I believe they are
working because they love work ; they simply
like to go ahead ; they cannot be lazy ; they
are the overland train.

Americans, if I mistake them not, are not
a people with serious ambitions. Chicago,
the typical American city, is the representative
of " go-aheadism." And Chicago has not
much brain, but has the most wonderful
physical power.

II

liCt me see your face a moment, my dear
Chicago — don't be scared, I shall not hurt
you I Well, well — say, did you wash your
face this morning, or do you wash every day ?
I suppose you never wash the face. How
can you be looking so smoky if you wash ?

O Lord, what is that overflowing in the
sky — that vast, writhing flood of blackness ?

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A Chicagoan said : " That's merely a smoke."
" Merely a smoke," you say ? Merely a
smoke that divorces the sun and his bride
the flower; that shuts out heaven from the
sight of men ? Now I see that the Chicagoans
cannot be either clean-faced or clear-souled
under such a terrible darkness.

I once dreamed the Sun and Blue Sky fell
in love with the Chicagoans. The Chicago-
ans were great-spirited — they honoured them-
selves in erecting the monument to the
liberator, Lincoln, over in the beautiful
Lincoln Park; they hesitated with the im-
pulse to rest from their labours and be senti-
mental— to worship the lovely. Then the
Sun and Blue Sky, with the best appearance
and freshest sentiment, showed their sweetest
attachment to the Chicagoans. What did
the Sun and Blue Sky whisper to them ?
They so tenderly whispered to leave the city
of business and dusts ; they softly commanded
to be a poet. The god of Chicago — or it
might be a devil — was eavesdropping and
overheard the whispering of the lovers. He
became enraged and wildly exclaimed to the
Sun and Blue Sky : ** Keep away from the
Chicagoans ! That's not your business." Then
the god — or the devil— built the forest of
chimneys, burned the soft coal, because it

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CHICAGO

is the cheapest, and bade all the chimneys to
blow up all the smokes like volcanoes. All
the chimneys obeyed his command. The
result was tragic, since the Sun and the
Blue Sky, being separated by the smoke,
lost all chances to see the Chicagoans. The
Master of Chicago gave a final command to
the Chicagoans : " You must be satisfied with
the city of business; you ought to marry
with Money and Smoke." This was my
dream.

Chicago is Chicago only because he has
the smoke. Without it Chicago would lose
his character, although it is an unpleasant
character. I rather would have even a bad
character than to have none.

Smoke! "Smoke" means Chicago as
'* flower" means Japan. Money! "Money"
means Chicago as " art " means Japan. There's
some difference, you see, between Chicago
and Japan.

I tell you, my friend Chicagoan, you will
turn to a negro if you do not beware, living
in such a smoke. If you could turn wholly
to a black, gaining his gentle, merry spirit
with his skin, that would be far better than
to remain as a white-faced human machine
in crazy Chicago. The negroes are harmless,
happy, the most obliging creatures in the world ;

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the negro is an ignorant, optimistic poet, in fact.
Thank God they are not " educated " I With
knowledge of book and world no one can be
jolly. That the wise man generally is not
fat, with the happy smile and the jolly
humour, is the rule.

The negroes have the simplest child heart ;
they have a warm love of a variety of loud
colours. I saw almost every day a negro
on the streets of San Francisco who carried
proudly a silver-tipped cane in his right hand
with the jaunty air of a cake-walk artist.
How brightly sparkled a diamond pin on his
red necktie ! What a combination, red with
his black face ! Was it a real diamond ? Of
course, with the negro of America, as with
anybody elsewhere, all that sparkles is not
diamond. The negroes are delighted with all
that glitters, and they are not particular
enough to distinguish between sham gems
and real.

I see many negroes in Chicago who are

not dressed with loud colours and sparkling

stones. Perhaps the negroes of the Pacific

coast are more richly situated. The negro

of San Francisco I am speaking of wore a

yellow vest and blue trousers ; his shoes

were tan. I hear that one of your great

council districts is represented by a statesman

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CHICAGO

of like tastes — the Honourable Coughlin, is
it not ?

Did you ever hear the negro crying? I
suppose not. They were born with only
laughter, though the other fellows learned
first to cry, their laughter coming later. The
negroes are the most wonderful mortals with
overflowing humour. The humour of their
manner, the humour in their voice, the
humour in every part of their bodies makes
us think of every one of them as a comic
actor. Glad am I to have acquaintance with
a few negro gentlemen. Is there any reason
why they cannot be gentlemen being waiters ?
What are their names ? Who knows ?

Seeing me every morning they cordially
welcome me with silent large smiles, showing
me their white teeth, sparkling their some-
what yellow eyes. Their graceful manner
and gentility soon make me forget anything
unagreeable about them and bring me to a
fairy world of sweetness and satisfaction. I
can not be happy unless waited on by some
black face. I recall what a jolly face they
make when they find a " two-bits " under the
plate. Oh, happy negro gentleman- waiter !
I love you. I will be with you forever !

One morning I paid for my breakfast with

a five-dollar piece of gold — do you know that

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THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

in California only the gold is acceptable
money? Such a solid green piece of paper
ought to go into the waste basket. Paper
money? What a value is in it, anyhow?
How can I distinguish a counterfeit from the
real money? You say there is no counter-
feit in Chicago?

" That's not money ; take it away-— destroy
it," I said when the black waiter — such a
jolly gentleman negro — gave me a dirty green
paper as a change for my gold piece.

He laughed, showing his ivory teeth like a
gentle bear, and said with lovely excitement :

" You are all right. Throw it away if you
wish, but — I will pick it up and keep it my-
self. Ha, ha, ha ! " He laughed like thun-
dering.

Even a soiled paper is worth something, no
doubt, in America.

But the trouble is, to keep such a paper
makes the pocket awfully wet. Need not
keep it, spend it, you say? All right, my
dear sir; Chicago makes that easy, if not
pleasant.

O negroes, you good-natured, never-get-
ting-sad creatures ! I am all ready any day
to leave this stone-hearted, smoky-faced city
of Chicago and join with you to your native
land. You have no home, you say ? You

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were imported as a slave many a year ago,
you say ? Slave ! What a sadly sweet sub-
mitting, what a gently melancholy obedience
the word *' slave" expresses! You were per-
fectly fortunate that you were slave ; the people
who kept you as slave were greatly mistaken.
I see still some stains of slavery in your face,
as I can recognise the traces of nobility in the
face of a bridge beggar who was once a noble
man. Surely you have had a sad experience.

Chicago is the city of **no time to spare
for another " ; Chicago is the city of " time
is money"; Chicago never invites any lazy
guest; Chicago has no patience for the
people asking questions, moving uncertainly —
although I understand the patience of Ameri-
can gentlemen, especially for ladies, is per-
fectly angelic, waiting upon them without
complaining, but with the highest satis-
faction and good humour. Chicago never
tastes of peaceful harmony and complete
leisure, consequently he cares nothing for a
man of quiet thought and slow steps, but
he loves a bright young man. What does
he care for any old crippled tramp?

The great city of Chicago is very cruel;
he may drown any man, whom he sees un-
necessary in the city, in the Lake of Michigan,
as the cider-presser throws away the useless

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

stuff after taking the juice out of the apple.
The man whom Chicago respects must be
a crazy man, rushing on like a racehorse,
wide awake, like an alarm clock.

Chicago is not the city of gentlemen.
What do I mean by " gentleman," you say ?
Chicago is the city of the sack coat, if I
can say that Washington is the city of the
dress coat and Boston is the city of the
frock coat. The sack-coat city of Chicago
has not enough dignity to attend with proper
ceremony upon a high-born lady, or to con-
duct suitably the funeral of a great general.
What a pity — such mighty strength, so little
restraint or cultivation I Chicago himself,
perhaps, does not care to attend to these
affairs. Chicago, I think, wants to be an
eternal sack-coat city. Chicago wants to
be far away from the conventional society of
foolish display or stupid formality. Chicago
wants simply to mind his own business —
that is, to make money, to build the high-
est building in the world, and to keep a
lady in leisure. Is she satisfied in leisure?
Not a bit I How unwise she is 1 She
wants to leave the home and engage in the
trade of the street and the mart like the
men.

The great dream of Chicago is to invent
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CHICAGO

a machine that will kill 10,000 hogs a
minute. Chicago cannot, with his present
aims and ambitions, ever become a high-
minded city.

** Mind your own business ! " It is the
most typical maxim of Americans. If you
rightly understand it, you are on the road
of success and glory in this world. '* Mind
your own business" means *' taking care
only of myself," does it not ?

There are many in Chicago who so under-
stand it, if I am not mistaken. The people
in the street, I mean, especially. They are
so unkind, impolite, rough. They only
take care of themselves; they cannot spare
even a minute for another's sake. If you
happen to ask a question of the people in
the street, they surely make a disagreeable
frown before your face, and then may even
murmur : " Great bore ! I have no time
for you."

In America — I mean in Chicago — every-
body ought to know everything. Even a
baby must walk alone without a nurse.
The conductor never stops a car if he sees
a cripple on the track. ** I mind my own
business; I cannot take care of you," the
Chicagoans might say.

Chicago is such a hard city for the stranger
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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

— like I am. Beware, my dear stupid visi-
tors to the city. Even to ask a slight
question of the rushing people on the
street is certainly something very rude.
How can I, spending only a week or so,
understand everything ? I am not bright
enough, like Chicago people, to know every-
thing without asking.

One morning I asked a man on the street
where is So-and-So street, what car to take.
When I heard him murmur something I saw
him already one hundred yards away from
me. Is that the way to treat a little Oriental ?
I felt so indignant. I asked the same question
of another man. The man said coldly : " No
time now, you ask somebody else." I was
almost crying, do you know ? I remember
that a San Francisco lady said at my depar-
ture that I will be lost in the great city of
Chicago. Yes, my dearest sweet woman on
the Pacific coast, I will surely be lost !

The third gentleman I asked was a rather
fat young man in a handsome suit. I thought
him very well-bred, having a tender sympathy
for a stranger and a fine heart. Did he answer
me nicely, you say ? No. He said roughly :
'* Go to a policeman ! "

'* Oh, policeman, where are you ? " I ex-
claimed.

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I hurried to a book printer's and got
a book of street guides of this city of
Chicago. '' Now, I am all right I " I said
with great joy. ** I thank you much, dear
guide maker; you gave relief to a stupid
Oriental gentleman."

Yes, I think the god of the Chicagoans
is a devil.

Ill

Within the evening sky is the star ; behind
the book the man; in the city of Chicago
the wealth and thundering noise. Not only
in the streets — the true thunders often verily
roar over Chicago. Even God makes some
joy in the great, crazy city, as it seems to
me, adding more noisy demonstrations to
the already unbearable trumpets of Chicago.
The most noisy time in the world is the
time of highest human energy and excite-
ment. The night is quiet, the night is when
the human energy and excitement sleep in
silent lullaby of stars and soft kissing of
breeze. Human beings — even nature or God
— find it impossible to explain their power and
motion without making noise. See how the
oceans roll, how the Yosemite shouts, how

the overland trains rush ! See the clamorous

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

crowd at the fruit market by the Chicago
River !

Chicago is the noisiest city in America !
Doesn't this mean that Chicago is the city
with the highest human energy and greatest
excitement in America ? Doesn't it mean that
Chicago is the most successful city of worldH-
ness and " go-aheadism " ? Worldhness and
**go-aheadism" are measured by the amount
of noise.

You, poet who prefers a rose petal to the
Masonic Temple, need not stay in Chicago
even a minute. Do you cover your ears
against the threatening dins of the city ? Do
you close your eyes against the endless pro-
cession of rushing people ? Some, stumbling,
throw away the gold and make a sad face —
what a pity ! You go away from Chicago into
the wood, and dream by the rivulet. You are
undoubtedly familiar with the cadence and
feeling of wood, and rivulet, but you are too
simple-minded to understand the confused
human sound of the city ; the great drama of
tears and laughter acted daily on the big stage
of Chicago is too much for your childish heart.
Chicago is not the city to take care particu-
larly of children, as is Japan. But if you wish
to stay, you may ; Chicago is indifferent. If

you wish to go, you go. Chicago is as big as

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the Lake of Michigan, and Chicago is cold as
a jail.

" Chicago ? That's American ! " I exclaimed.
'* That's American " means great, as " that's
German " means steady, and " that's French "
means artistic, and "that's English" means
comfortable, and "that's Japanese" means
dainty, and " that's Chinese " means gross.
You ask me what I mean by " great " ?
Chicago is America. America without Chi-
cago would lose what is America.

If there be the time when we complain that
the world is small, America will be as large as
she is to-day, and the Americans immense for-
ever. If there be the time when we will
complain that America is small, Chicago will
be as large as to-day, and the Chicagoans
immense forever. I hail you — Chicago !

Are you really only sixty years old, my
dearest Chicago? Sixty years are merely a
short hour. " You tell a lie, you rather-old-
looking City of Men!" I declared often.
How can anything under the sun grow so
fast ? Chicago himself says : " I live in hard
working and in darkest smoke, naturally I get
rugged and tired ; very likely I look older
than my own age."

I myself, being such a fellow as never kept a

book in my life — even a copy of my own pub-

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

lications — hurried to the city Hbrary to find
out the true age of Chicago. City Hbrary !
After all, it cannot be anything but Chicago-
esque. His is the richest library, no doubt, as
everything in Chicago is great in size and
wealth. Its million books are filling all the
shelves, as the dry goods fill the big stores.
Oh, librarian, you furnished me a very good
dinner, even ice cream, but — where is the table ?
The Chicago city library has no solemnly
quiet, softly peaceful reading-room ; you are
like a god who made a perfect man and forgot
to put in the soul; the books are worth
nothing without having a sweet corner and
plenty of time, as the man is nothing without
soul. Throw those books away, if you don't
have a perfect reading-room ! Dinner is use-
less without a table. I want to read a book
as a scholar, as I want to eat a dinner as a
gentleman. What difference is there, my
dearest Chicago, between your honourable
library and the great department store, an
emporium where people buy things without a
moment of selection, like a busy honey bee ?

The library is situated in the most annoy-
ingly noisy business quarter, under the over-
hanging smoke, in the nearest reach of the
engine bells of the lakeside. One can hardly

spend an hour in it if he be not a Chicagoan

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CHICAGO

who was born without taste of the fresh air
and blue sky. The heavy, oppressive, ill-
smelling air of Chicago almost kills me some-
times. What a foolishness and absurdity of
the city administrators to build the office of
learning in such a place of restaurants and
barber shops !

Look at that edifice of the city library !
Look at that white marble! That's great,
admirable ; that means tremendous power of
money. But what a vulgarity, stupid taste,
outward display, what an entire lacking of
fine sentiment and artistic love ! Ah, those
decorations with gold and green on the
marble stone spoil the beauty ! What a
shame ! That is exactly Chicagoesque. O
Chicago, you have fine taste, haven't you ?

The Encydopcedia Britannica informs that
the organisation of Chicago began in the
year 1837. To be exact, he is just sixty-
three years old. Isn't he a wonderful young
city ? How can I believe that in only sixty-
three years 77,000 acres, extending over
fifteen miles north and south and over
eight miles east and west, were occupied by
2,000,000 of people ? It is magic. It grew
in one night, like a spring bamboo shoot.
It is like the eternal Fuji Mountain of far-
off Japan, which appeared suddenly one

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

morning 2000 years ago, as the legend tells,
to the great wonder of the people. It is a
dream. It is just like a story.

You ought to know whom you talk to
before you speak. Chicago is almost a baby
city, as far as its age concerns, for there are
many cities a thousand years old in this
world. Is it natural and right for you to
want the baby city to be poetical, to be
philosophical at once? You, who are com-
plaining to Chicago of its lacking of profound
refinement and gentle manners, are foolish
as much as one who wants a baby to reply
to the greatest questions of life and death.
You must give time — one hundred years or
two hundred perhaps — to Chicago. The
grandchildren of Chicago will learn surely
how to speak to strangers, what is art, how
to spell correctly the names of great poets.

How painful and unpleasant to see the
precocious young philosophers or poets whose
faces are pale, whose sad eyes are downcast I
Young men should be young men; they
should laugh with the world and sunshine;
they should work hard like the summer
ants; they should be hopeful as a spring
morn. Glad am I to be acquainted with
this great city of Chicago. Chicago is the
typical city of modern young men. Chica-

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goans take the world straight, give to the
world a plain statement; Chicagoans never
understand the world in cynical ways or
dreamy fashions. They take the world in
ail-roundly good process and with fine
understanding ; they are happy, no doubt ;
they are glad to live and work. They eat
plenty meats at morning ; they work hard
in daytime; they play ball on Sunday.
Look at their great muscles! Isn't it
simply grand ?

It is such a refreshment for an Oriental
like me to meet with Chicagoans. I feel
myself the new blood of modern life and
freshest joy of the world circulating in me,
and I am almost come to exclaim : " Oh,
empty dreams and visionary poems, go away
from me I I am to be a plain modern
youth of the world of money and happi-
ness. How glad to be a fine materialist!
What a joy to be a hard worker ! Work
means growing hope and new sunshine."

Nearly all the Chicagoans, except but
one or two mortals with the subtitle poet,
are fine materialists — notice that adjective
*'fine." They are born hard workers; lazi-
ness is truly an unpardonable crime to them.
They are proud any time to show their big
muscles of arms, like hams, and their broad

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shoulders, like the branches of the redwood
under the severe force of winter. Chicago
never allows any do-nothing fellow to come
up here ; the shiftless, lazy dude, whose
only care is to perfect the curve of his
finger nails, knocks at the gate of Chicago
without having any answer.

I thank God, the wise, most practical
Chicago has not a simply handsome, good-
for-nothing type of youth hanging around
the cigar stores, as in San Francisco. The
Chicago boys are not handsome enough to
stand exposing their vain faces with the
air of the perfectly superior lady killer.
The Chicago boys have not such a blue eye
as the San Franciscans have — Chicago her-
self scarcely sees the blue sky; they don't
spend much money on their neckties. Those
rubbish, those professional lady killers, to
speak more clearly, at the cigar stand of
San Francisco, with the powder on face,
with the huge cane in arm, with a cigar
in mouth, make the most despicable, cheap-
est show in the world. I advise you, my
dear California, to pass a law suppressing
them. They are a great disgrace to your
honourable State.

Thank heaven, the Chicago cigar stores are

not fitted for the convenience of such hangers-

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CHICAGO

on. But I am sorry that I, myself enjoying
sometimes a cigarette, can hardly find a good
one in Chicago. Worst of all, is that any
cigar store north of the river does not keep
even a bad cigarette. Still, I do not miss the
smoke here as one would do in another city ;
one has but to breathe in the air. I am sorry
that the Chicago cigar store does not have a
slot machine. What a disappointment ! I
cannot try a fortune by dropping a nickel.

How can Chicago take care of sick people ?
Chicago might say : ''I am not a hospital."
Chicago has no tenderness of the grand-
mother, Chicago is taking always the un-
changeable attitude of the cold business man.
Chicago is the city of wheat and of pork. Think
just a moment of 2,000,000 of Chicagoans,
with the strongest nerve force and vigorous,
regular action of the stomach and clean blood
in quick circulation ! I know that the doctors
have a hard struggle in this great city. I do
not observe here so many signs of doctors as I
did on the Pacific coast. But I am not sure
of the business of lawyer.

I observed that the Chicago people, espe-
cially I mean the people on the street, do not
wear much of white shirts. Laundry work
of Chicago is not good, I understand. The
Chicagoans are not dudes, but the most honest,

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THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

simple, working men. When I left San Fran-
cisco nearly all the San Francisco gentlemen
wore, as I observed, the black stiff hat of $3.50,
and in Chicago I observe that they do not
sacrifice much money in their headgear. Some
of the Chicagoans wear a straw hat of $1,
some a cap of half a dollar, some a rather
cheap, black, stiff hat, some a grey soft one.
They wear such stuff with perfect satis-
faction, because these things are cheap, but
not because a cheap thing is more appro-
priate or becoming in the weather of Chicago.
I saw only one or two gentlemen in silk
hats, except the carriage drivers, since I was
in Chicago. The silk hat does not fit with
the city's sack coat. Perhaps it is because
the lawyers, doctors, or the honourable judges
of this great city want to be distinguished
from the driver.

IV

One day I presented to Chicago a cotton
handkerchief of enormous size, with the red
flowers as decorations, and one silk, but
very tiny one, requiring him to prefer one
of them. Chicago was not bright enough
to imagine vividly that I was examining
his own character. Chicago is gentle, some-

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times so stupid, and it is well that he is
so, since such is the general character of the
most practical person. Chicago is not the
city with wolfish teeth and hawk eye, like
a thief. He is a plain, big city of good-
natured America, oh, so slow oftentimes
to discover another's secret scheme. He is
too large-hearted, sometimes ridiculously so,
to appreciate anything.

Now to return to the handkerchief business.
Which was Chicago's selection? Chicago
chose the former — that is, the cotton hand-
kerchief of enormous size. Chicago has no
secret ; never tells a lie, I presume. Chicago's
heart opens wide to anybody without a screen
or door, like the art gallery at the lakeside.
Chicago has the frankness of children ; speaks
out everything like a phonograph — even
something not to be spoken. Chicago is per-
fectly ignorant of the art of little-speaking
and silence-keeping. Chicago is never still,
naturally never sleeps. Chicago is the city
of day, when dreams and rest have no power.
Chicago is the city of clean glass which has
no mystery.

Hear what Chicago said on his preference

of the handkerchiefs I presented: "I take

this cotton one because this is large in size

and looks pretty with red flowers." What

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

a shame ! To the most practical Chicago
the quality and taste of silk handkerchief
are nothing of value. Chicago, eternal city
without quality and taste !

Chicago is such a city who loves a penny
rather than ten yards of divine poems of
Heaven and rose. The Chicago poets — isn't
it a surprise to be informed that certain
groups of poets exist even in Chicago?
How many altogether in this great Cook
County, my dear sir, are starving to death,
no doubt! You better be a barber or
waiter rather than a well-known poet in
this country — of course in Chicago. To be
even a shoe-polisher, making a living in
competition with black faces, is, indeed, a
great deal better than to be a "lover of
nature." America, or Chicago, is any day
ready to offer you a laurel of **fame," but
not a nickel under the sun.

The laurel of ''fame" costs him nothing

in the world. He does gladly send away

a thousand laurels of '' fame " according to

order every where — to-day to Mr. A, and

to-morrow to Mr. B, and he has forgotten

whom he bestowed them upon and when.

The vain poets, the most pretentious mortals

who sing daily to be free from the vanity,

but are verily hungry for the admiration

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CHICAGO

and pompous demonstration, wear that laurel
of " fame " with great satisfaction and walk
around with proud gesticulations like an
ostrich, after a glance in the mirror.

But look at that one who offered it to
them, sneering tremendously after them be-
hind the door. He said : ** There fools, go !
Your crowns are paper-made and painted."
What a pity 1 What a poor poet ! America,
the cruel, money-worshipping America, may
any day drive these harmless poets away from
the country as Russia with the Jew people,
because America with heavy purse and hand-
some clothes cannot endure their long, un-
combed hair and thin, pale faces.

I understand that Chicago has already
proclaimed against the poets. *'Your being
in our city means a nuisance ; therefore you
are to go away. Chicago is not the right
place for your honourable dream and being
lazy to the extreme. We hear often that all
the people like you live in Boston. Do they
not ? Please, my dear fellows, go there ! "
What Boston, being also one of the American
cities, is going to do with the wonderful
crowd of poets, I wonder ?

Show me where is the beautiful lady who
is our ideal ! Where are the people who have
no transgression, no fault and no weakness !

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If the Chicagoans have a blemish, as any
countryman has, it must be surely that
they do measure everything by its size and
mere appearance. The great love of the
immense size and appearance becomes a crime
— perhaps not a crime, but assuredly a shame,
since you discard utterly all thought of high
quality and taste.

Although Chicago is the city caring only
for the big size and appearance, the face of
Chicago looks so dark under the thick smoke,
and the appearance of Chicagoans in the ill-
fitting suits is pitiful. Chicago keeps saying :
"Any old piece will do, if its size is large
and it looks good." That is the unmovable
principle of Chicago. Size ! Appearance !
Not the quality, not the taste !

How can Chicago attain to the highest
dignity? How can he procure a true admi-
ration from the thoughtful critics? Does he
not care for the criticism by others ? Is he
unconventional ? My dear sirs, I have never
encountered with such a conventional people
in my life as the Americans — as the Chica-
goans, if your prefer — who are astonishingly
sensitive to any criticism. They are like a
snail — merely one touch of the finger makes
their whole construction shudder as by a
storm. But they are giant in body like an

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elephant ; don't you know that the elephant
is the most sensitive of animals ?

I perfectly understand why newspaper-
cutting bureaus are making a solid business
in this country. They are securing bread and
butter, I conclude, out of the foolishness of
people, the vain wishes to hear what praise
another has given. The Americans are so
childishly honest — is honest the right word?
They would gladly accept every good word
spoken to them with straight doubtlessness,
without any discrimination. What pitifully
blind people who are so fatally unable to distin-
guish between flattery and the true praise ! I
value highly, however, the most gentle quality
in Americans that never allows any suspicion
of another's word. They are perfect angels in
such matters. Really they will paste in their
scrapbooks even a senseless babbling of a
baby if it was concerned with them, and they
will keep it in the safe. Scrapbook has an
equal estimation to them as an heirloom, or
diamond ring of grandmother.

If you will declare that the Chicagoans

are ridiculous, that exactly means to put a

verdict of '* ridiculous " on the heads of

Americans. The Chicagoans who incessantly

keep saying: *• Look, just a moment; look,

my dear visitor ; am I not beautiful ? How

115

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

do you think of me ? Please, say I am good
looking ! " — as a dear little butterfly girl with
red ribbon and straw hat — are verily ridi-
culous, are they not? To tell the truth, I
was sickly tired in California with such a
stupid, tasteless-like- wax, nonsensical question
as, *'How do you like America?" or "How
long have you been?" Not because I have
no correct answers, but truly because my
sincere reply might make my interview
tragic.

I tried so far to keep myself from being
introduced to new people, simply because I
hated to come face to face with such an
eternal stereotyped question. And, alas, I
found myself in the same ditch in this
Chicago ! Oh, how many commonplace en-
counters I had with the everlasting " How do
you like Chicago ? " and " How long do you
expect to stay ? " I almost decided to have
my answers printed on paper and to show
it before my new acquaintance began to
throw the questions over me.

What opinion I have of Chicago? Shall
I flatter ? The Chicagoans will make a some-
what awkward, smiling face — and look with
the twinkling eyes of satisfaction and conceit
of " I expect so." And they will say in slow,
haughty tones : " This is the most great city

116

CHICAGO

— don't you know?" Shall 1 speak my true
opinion ? How my interview will end ?

I must be a hermit in Chicago, although
I have a heavy mission to investigate this
big man-town. Why? Because I have no
more desire to make enemies personally than
to make more friends. Personal disagree-
ment or quarrel is the most sad experiment.
As for me, I have a proud, hard-to-bend
backbone. I was born without flattery or
sycophancy. I find it more difficult to please
the Americans than to graduate from the
University of Chicago. Yes, sir; I am too
honest for the Americans — for the Chicagoans,
if you please !

You, my dear Chicago people, don't come
approaching me with the bothering questions
on Chicago and the Chicagoans, but softly,
gracefully step towards me, as your sweet
summer evening breeze, with the much
beautiful chat of divine star or angel rose !

I really wonder whether the average Chica-
goan knows how roses look ! Do you know,
Chicagoan, that roses don't grow on the
mountain top or in the river?

To say too much with almost any matter
is far from to be admirable. The Tokio
servant girls are despised, simply because
they talk silly nonsense hanging around

117

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the public well with water bucket in hand.
Chattering is an offence in Japan, the land
of pride and peace.

I am stopping now with my criticism
on Chicago and the Chicagoans. To stop
means to save my dignity. A poet ought
to be silent. Was I of service to you, my
dear friend ? I pray that you will fully ap-
preciate my frankness. Good-bye! May
nothing worse befall you !

118

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE (igOS)

My art of making myself at home even in
an impossible place, which my long sojourn
in lands strange and new taught me, alas !
in spite of myself, seemed to fail flatly in
London. I thought she (more likely Lon-
don is he), like Japan of many tempera-
ments, had been indulging herself in bad
humour, perhaps in sorrow of reminiscence
on the August passed, or perhaps in chronic
fear of coming winter, as the month of my
arrival was November. I stood silent in
thought that my slight movement of affec-
tion might make her more disagreeable ;
I kept at a distance as much as I could.
I slowly felt that I was out of place, when
I imagined a certain hostility between my-
self and London. I was so sorry in leaving
Boston, and even New York, until one day
when, long after my hunt for a hidden
affinity which 1 fancied I might discover
in the role of sightseer, had ended, every-

119

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

thing changed at once : London, the great-
est city of the world, at last turned her
interesting face to me. And, after a West-
ern fashion, I kissed her. We became one.
Let me tell you how I found her beauty.

It was about four o'clock, or earlier than
that, of one day in the month of December.
I always feel curious, and even ambitious,
about that hour, as there is some time yet
before supper, and I feel as if my day's
work was done. I was standing on West-
minster Bridge, but not without a reason;
as it was the "pea-soup day," London's
mental attitude, I thought, was quite dubi-
ous. How I complained of the fact that
she was sticking too close to her own senses
(also to the earth) ; how I wished even
once she could act fantastically. Her geo-
graphical transcendency looked now to me
extremely poetical, though not verily beauti-
ful; it is my opinion the real poetry has
to do only a little with beauty. I was
almost in a delirium or dream (here stand-
ing on the bridge perfectly sieged by the
greyness of fog), where neither latitude nor
longitude bothered me; the only difference
between me and the doves that swarmed
around me on the most intimate terms

was that I could not fly. It was, indeed,

120

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

the first time that the old soul of London
even appeared to flirt with me through the
almost frivolous sway of those doves' wings.
I was much pleased with it. The fogs hid
the ugly sign of a certain drink on the other
side ; the audacities of Cleopatra's Needle
that often made me uncertain at once calmed
down in a graceful way unimaginable. I
raised my head, and alas, observed to my
great surprise two unusually large suns in
real old gold, in the East and West, on
both sides of the bridge where, as I said,
I had to have a little talk with the doves.
I was glad to say that the thing of wonder
appeared by magic at last in London. I
would not listen, I decided, if anybody
might say that one of the red balls on
the lower skies was but the moon. Under
my feet Thames stopped running down.
" What a picture ! " I exclaimed. " Oh,
what fogs ! "

Joaquin Miller, my old California friend,
often told me that I would best avoid the
word of fog in poetry ; he even inclined to call
Poe vulgar from only that one point of his
frequent use of it. But Miller's beloved word
" mist " with, as it always seems to me, light-
ness of spring, was hardly the word I could
substitute in the place of London fogs which

121

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

swim, even jump, almost like a whale of
fantastic shape. It was only in those days of
fogs when London was pleased to be lost in
the grey vastness of mystery that I could
speculate on my poetical feeling ; I confess
that I doubted at the beginning of my arrival
on the real relation of the city with Keats or
Tennyson, as the people here appeared not to
speak the language of either of them. I felt
uneasy in mind, as my American accent might
become the cause of their laughter, although,
with Professor Mathews or somebody, I be-
lieve that Americans speak a far purer English
than the Englishmen themselves. " Where's
English poetry ? " I not once exclaimed, more
or less in condemnation. Happy to be a
foreigner sometimes, as he can say anything
he wishes, without feeling any responsibility
for the creation of a condition he is going to
criticise. With that right of the foreigner,
I openly expressed my displeasure with Lon-
don's commercialism, which verily often in the
months of winter becomes, glad to say, less
forcible, and even attractive, under the veil of
fogs. How often I walked by the Embank-
ment in such days or nights with all the justi-
fication of my poetical feehng; it is the
sadness of the age that we must have a reason
even for poetry. As I remember rightly, it

122

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

was after eight or nine o'clock when I left the

house of D , Esquire, where I had gone to

drink a social cup of tea; oh, it was such a
foggy night when the 'buses stopped, and I
wrote ;

" Alas ! I have lost my path ! Astray !

0 cheating elf, leave me alone, pray !

1 long to steal toward a flowery dale by

the moonbeams."

The sad part was that, not reaching the
flowery dale, I stepped out on to West-
minster Bridge, long after my groping by the
walls of Buckingham Palace and many other
places ; it was almost midnight when I reached
my lodgings in Brixton Road, at one pound
a week, cold and fireless. I was then only
a little better off than my friend Yoshio
Markino, with whom I lived ; not better off in
money, but in the fact that I had a letter of
praise in my drawer written by Meredith. I
am sure I should become mad and despise
London for such almost impossible fogs if I
were an Englishman ; but let me say once for
all that it was the illogicalness of a foreigner
(What ? Delightful quality, is it ?) that made
me love her much more for her faults. How
pleasing to stand above the usual common

senses native to the land I I had been leading

123

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

such a life here and there for more than ten
years.

I do not quarrel with the Englishmen when
they hate the fogs ; but I should like to
impress on them their strange beauty. It is
altogether their prejudice, not their blindness,
not to sing them in poetry, paint them in
picture; I feel much pleased to speculate on
the possible effect of even Markino's pictures
of fog, although they might be unsatisfactory
to you, and think that they might open their
eyes to the fogs without the appreciation of
which these months of London's winter would
be sadder than total blank. I often thought
of the London fogs as of a great artistic
problem (why not ?) ; they might stand in the
same relation as tsuyu^ or rainy season, for us
Japanese. The beauty of the fogs can only
appeal to one whose aestheticism is older than
life; their grey effect is a far more living
thing than darkness or death. What a world
of twilight, where your dream and reality shall
be joined by one long sorrow of Eternity !
What a song of greyness, which is the highest !
What an atmosphere by whose magic you
shall find slowly a mysterious way to your
ideal. It is one month of rain that makes
Japanese reflective, teaches them a lesson of
patience, while the fogs turn Englishmen, the

124

MY FIKST LONDON EXPERIENCE

most unpoetical of people, even poetical, ac-
cepting the theory that poetry is a criticism
of life. It is again by reason of the mental
effect they receive from them that they cannot
leave poetry alone. Both of them, rain and
fogs, force us within the door, and result in
making us home people ; it is true, I think, we
would not have conceived such an elaborate way
of making tea or arranging flowers, if we did not
have the rainy season ; and without the winter
of fogs, the English people would be less
bright in conversation, and the delightfulness
of the English drawing-room would be less
complete. Indeed, for the existence of the
society and the club in England the fogs
should be thanked. Who will say they are
disagreeable ? I believe that what I have said
here is not merely a psychological speculation.
It is not too much to say that there is no
country like England, where people show
their best at afternoon tea ; while the talk of
gentlemen is always effective, the silence of
the ladies is far more effective. (It reminds
me that the voice is silver and silence gold.)
The topics they talk on are various, the
differences in opinion being well arranged,
like corals on a string, of freedom which runs
indeed through all the souls of them ; and

their having no formalism is most delightful

125

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

for us Japanese, who enslave ourselves more
or less under its tyranny. Such is one of
the distinguished English characteristics in
private and in public ; publicly, I have seen it
in the combat of the Press, and, more pleas-
ing to say, at Hyde Park Corner, where Social-
ists, nay, even Anarchists, have equal liberty
with theologians. You would not blame
me if I call it the Japanese Government's
most barbarous coup d'etat, when I reflect,
while I write this article, on the fact that
a certain Japanese publisher was obliged to
erase off the whole chapter on Socialism
from his Encyclopaedia, as the Government
was afraid of its influence on the country.
What a pity she is mistaken in thinking op-
pression necessary to the keeping of perfect
order ! I am sure that not only the foreigners,
but the Englishmen, too, feel very little the
officialism of London ; and I have many
reasons to believe, with many other Japanese,
that England is the most comfortable country
of the world to live in. How can you find her
otherwise, when our right is well respected,
and we are treated with much consideration ?
She is the country where (now returning to
the English drawing-room) you will be asked,
" One lump or two lumps ? " And again she
is the country where you can take sugar as

126

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

many lumps as you wish. I thank the Enghsh
ladies who always gave me a comfortable
corner of their drawing-rooms, where I could
freely indulge in my habitual silence even
amid their talk; how delightful it was to
watch the profiles of people which suddenly
visualised themselves through the fragrance of
smoke. I will never forget how beautifully

the Lady C smoked ; what a charm in her

little fingers ! What a fair skin was hers ! It
may have been the famous English skin,
famous all over the world. And what au-
dacity, almost sportsmanlike, when she asked
her lady friend at her departure, " Take a
little whisky, dear, before you go ? "

It is admirable of them to believe that
England is the first country of the world,
and that Englishmen are the recognised pro-
tectors of civilisation and peace, and they act
accordingly; such a belief of theirs could be
clearly seen, I often thought, in the fact that
they never asked me, as Americans would,
what I thought of England and her people.
They smiled with no particular reason when I
expressed my wonder at the bigness of London,
which is not even a little stirred by the foot-
step of a poet- writer, as the said Lady C

rather bluntly put it when I disclosed my
poetical ambition. Without any bitterness

THE STORY OF YC^E NOGUCHI

toward her, although I confess a httle dis-
couragement at her words then, I decided to
bring out a sixteen-page pamphlet with my
own money, some three pounds which I had
kept aside for the purpose of two days in Paris
at Christmas. When I got some proof of my
success in my poetical adventure, I wrote to
dear old Stoddard of Hawaiian fame, the true
friend of Stevenson, to whom I dedicated
From the Eastern Sea, who answered me in
the following fashion :

" O my poet ! Can you imagine my sur-
prise when I turned the leaves of your latest
book, and found it was dedicated to me? I
was quite wild with excitement; I hardly
knew what to do with myself. Oh, I am so
happy ! Your success is now assured in Eng-
land. The moment you are recognised by
the right person, or persons, you are recognised
by all the London world. Now, you see, like
my Lord Byron, you wake up to find yourself
famous ! O, my beloved kid, I am so glad —
so very, very glad ! "

Dear old emotional Stoddard ! While I
was not sure of my awakening like Byron,
I confessed I was not without pleasure then
at being spoken of in such style. The main

128

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

point is to impress on you that the true soul
of London, at least her own literary soul,
is not proportionless like her measurelessly
expanded streets ; indeed, she is moved by
the guidance of a few right persons. Great
London, who looked so cold and unsympa-
thetic at the beginning, began to smile toward
me quite passionately; I even sang a love
song into her ears.

It would look a sort of note of a common
traveller to write generally on the British
Museum or the National Gallery ; beside, it
is not light work by any means. One strong
impression I received in the former place was
when I turned the leaves of Blake's large
hand-illuminated book ; how strengthened my
mind grew from seeing the living proof of art
greater than life. And again it was in the
same place that I felt an almost reverent thrill

when I saw Sir D , already old as he was,

but young and single-minded, studying the
forgotten Chinese book with such a zeal; I
wished to disappear on the spot when he
insisted on my enlightening his mind on a
certain phrase in the book, as he thought,
doubtless, I might be quite a Chinese scholar.
In fact, it is only lately that I began, shame
to say, my own study of the Orient.

How often I went to the National Gal-
129 I

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

lery, particularly in Turner's Rooms, before
London's drawing-rooms opened their social
doors for me, sometimes with my friend
Markino, more often with my imaginary
person, artist or critic, to whom I could talk,
as much as I wanted, on Turner. I was very
glad that I had resisted the temptation of
Ruskin's books beforehand, as I wished to see
Turner with my own eyes. The favourite
talk between me and my imaginary person,
perhaps an Englishman, was on the arts sub-
jective and objective ; I tried hard to impress
him with the importance of the Oriental con-
ception of art, by that I mean the subjective.
When I went so far as even to point out
Turner's technical fault (now looking at his
biggest canvas in the room), and, for argu-
ment's sake, called him a subjective artist,
even emphasizing that he was most Oriental
in heart, he would exclaim at once : " Ad-
mitting these faults as you wish, what then ?
Don't they make a great service to the whole
canvas as a relief? Look at those masts, if
you please I And again at those smokes !
How perfect in technique ! What I see
most in it is the mighty glory of the master
technician. Isn't it great that any portion of
his picture, supposed to be torn out, can make

a complete picture by itself ? " He appeared

130

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

to be pleased when I agreed to go carefully,

beginning with technique in his water-colours ;

but it seemed he did not listen at all to my

words of denunciation with his too wonderful

colour not quite true to nature. 1 was sorry,

however, he did not see that my real point in

denying his technical magic was to value more

his imagination and impulse, and more the

real colour behind his pictures which was a

song and passion.

I cannot pass without a word on the Tate

Gallery, particularly Rossetti's pictures in

it, which served most mysteriously to make

me understand his poems better; I am not

playing a paradox in saying that his un-

naturalness was most natural, his formalism

a living fire itself. It was partly Rossetti's

memory, the existence of Carlyle's house of

course, that often turned my head toward

Chelsea; but it is more true to say that

my main reason was to feel a strangely

mingled impression of the city and country

there. As I have a proverb, " A good

man loves a mountain, while a wise man

water," it is easy to associate Carlyle with

Chelsea; but I would never believe, if I

had not been told, that Keats wrote To

a Nightingale here. It should be Hamp-

stead, "not far from man, verily near to

131

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

God," for him. I confess I could not
believe, though without any strong reason
for my disbelief, that George du Maurier
was lying there. However, he would feel
particularly uncomfortable, I thought, as it
was not that Immortal Bird we hear nowa-
days at Hampstead, but the thrush, which
might be a better subject for the pages of
Punch, It was here on a certain after-
noon in the month of March that I smelled
first the most keen fragrance of violets, as
keen as any ode of Keats'. I thought that
England's winter was nearly over, and it
was about the time when London was
going to put away her grey cloak like that
of Hamlet. Sad to say, I was obliged to
leave London before the purple gossamers
had begun to veil over Hyde Park. I
could not offer my respect to Disraeli on
Primrose Day ; one of his novels, though
I forget its title, was the first English novel
ever I got in my boyhood day with money
from my peddling Japanese colour-prints in
the streets of San Francisco.

Let me read the first part of my own
English diary at random, as I like to feel
the old sensation again afresh :

Nov. 2nd. — Hoity-toity ! Is this London

really ? " That is too sudden," I exclaimed.

132

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

All my friends over the seas, the curtain
has risen at last ; the play is now beginning.

'Buses and again 'buses ! Cabs and again
cabs ! What a crowd ! How dirty are
those streets ! I am glad not to see any
dog around here, whom I always hate.
But isn't it a pity that the English girls
wear rather shabby hats ? The gentlemen
look to play with their own dignity. I
have not seen even one gentleman who is
fat and jolly; I see that it would be taken
here as a crime to look happy. I am often
told that we must see the Englishman at
home, if we wish to see him at his best.
That may be true.

I felt already influenced by the English
atmosphere silent and solemn, even before
a few hours had hardly passed. I almost
forgot, under such an influence, how to speak.

I never saw before such tired-looking
people who filled the hotel lobby; they
may be, like myself, foreigners who have
come to see London. I should like to
know their first impression here.

Ladies and gentlemen, where is famous

St. Paul's Cathedral? Didn't I expect to

see it from any corner? I wished in my

heart an evening bell would sing out from

Westminster Abbey, when I stepped into

133

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

London. Oh, where is the London Bridge?
I will dust my hat, and go out to dine
somewhere, and study a bit London by
night.

Mh. — I ate a "grilled chop" last night.
My friends in America, do you ever know
what is a *' lemon squash " ? Is there no water
in London ? The waiter looked strangely at
me when I asked after it; why, I forgot
this was England, where are only two things,
beer and Bible.

I believe the word economy is the key-
note of English greatness. Let me learn
it (what a great problem) beginning with
one pitcher of water, with which I have to
be content for my morning toilet. Indeed,
I wish to have bath-houses rather than the
statues I encounter here at almost every
corner; I see that you have to begin with
hero-worship in England, while cleaning your
body is the first thing in Japan.

** Biscuit, sir," the waiter says when I ask
for crackers. Any name will do as long
as the thing is the same. Let me get a
copy of the book. How to Act in London.

I have the most unhappy breakfast at
this hotel; it would be better, I thought,
to eat even alone in any big temple. The
air in the hotel is cold ; the dining-room

134

MY FIKST LONDON EXPERIENCE

reminds me of a drawing-room of an Ameri-
can undertaker.

What a parade of frock coats ! I never
saw before such a crowd of men in that
coat ; the frock coat will be eternally un-
changed and the same, however the world
might change, or an Imperial Kingdom turn
to a republic. How many hundred thou-
sand people in that immortal coat pass by
Charing Cross every day ? It is here that
I wrote one seventeen syllable hokku poem,
which appears, when translated, as follows :

''Tell me the street to Heaven.
This ? Or that ? Oh, which ?
What webs of streets ! "

To-day I rode on a 'bus, taking a " garden

seat," from which I could command a general

view over the streets ; what a human desert

under my feet, groaning monotonous and sad 1

The air above my head was clear. The

driver touched the horses lightly, and tried

to encourage them with the hum of song.

Oh, where did I wish to go ? I did not

know, to be sure. And how could I know

since the London streets were a perfect

puzzle ? The horses stopped. I left the

'bus before I had any thought. Somebody

said to me : " This is the place where John-

135

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

son, Boswell, too, used to walk in ancient
day, and they laughed, talked, and ate beef-
steak pie to heart's content." Why, this
was Temple Bar.

Qth, — I wrote to my friend in America
that the price of champagne was delight-
fully cheap. I was much pleased to buy
chestnuts in the street, an excusable taste,
considering their price. But I am very
sorry that I cannot give any good word
to coffee here ; I am learning to drink tea
even at breakfast. A healthy symptom of
Englishmen can be seen in the amount that
they eat every day ; they cannot go to sleep
till they eat a full supper at ten or eleven
o'clock. What simplicity ! I am beginning
to use a pipe for my smoke, following after
an English fashion.

I was pleased not to see many advertise-
ments round the Tower of London, when
I went there to-day. You will be inquisitive
of a little handbag that I carried ; you must
not laugh and say something mean, if I
confess I had a copy of the London guide-
book in it.

Thames was black like ink. It would
be on such a day as this that the ghosts of
those who have been killed may appear and
disappear, haunting the Tower. I was far

136

a.^

■.=^1 BlUXTON ROAD

MY FIRST LONDON EXPERIENCE

from feeling well. I was frightened by a
ghost — the ghost I made acquaintance with
in the play of Hamlet — at a dark corner of
a corridor; but it turned out in a prosaic
way, since this is London, that he was no-
body but a "beefeater" with many medals
on his breast.

It would be better for you not to ask
how famous London Bridge looked.

Sth. — I was caught by the rain in the
street. I dropped into a tea-house. Alas !
I already have a tea mania. How untidy
of those English women not to try even to
raise their skirts under the rain ! They
walked without hats, undisturbed and com-
posed as if nothing fell from the sky. The
style of shoes they wore was not satisfactory.

IMh. — Westminster, at last 1 The dear
verger whom I fancied to be a spirit from
any tomb in the Abbey, disappointed me
when he approached me, not in Greek or
Latin as I wished, but in plain English, to
make me buy a guide-book of the place.

It would be courteous to have the bust
of Longfellow here ; but I wished Washing-
ton Irving might be with him. Where is
an American writer who was more loyal
than he?

I saw somebody spit on Dr. Johnson's
187

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

tomb. Poor old LL.D. ! My imagination's
ears heard his roar of revilement. Certainly,
it was a too jolly nose, that of the poet Gold-
smith of Ireland.

26th. — I took a nap. Is it true it is said
to be a proper thing to do in England ?
To-day is Sunday. I cannot help feeling
quite religious staying in London. When
I stepped into St. Paul's, the service had
already begun ; the Bishop coughed, I should
say, divinely. I walked home, that is, to
the poor lodging in Brixton Road, after the
service was over; the soft breeze, unusual
for the season, as it was near December,
kissed my brown cheeks. Thames seen from
the Victoria Embankment under the dark-
ness was not altogether unpoetical.

138

VI

AGAIN IN LONDON (1913-14)
I

I WAS thankful that England (or perhaps
London) began already at the Nord Station,
where my English was found to be of some
use, and happier still that I could buy my
beloved old Punch with the English money.
Good-bye, francs and centimes ! People in
Paris must have thought me an idiot or some-
thing quite superhuman, as, when I took a 'bus
or bought a picture postcard or a necktie, I
had to spread out the French money in a row
upon my palm and let them take whatever
they liked. But at the Nord Station I felt as
if I had grown into a man at once out of a
childish helplessness, when I could protect my
own pocket-book, and know what was in it.
I surprised the French porter who carried my
Japanese bamboo portmanteau to a compart-
ment when I emptied all the French money
still left in my pocket. Such a smile I tell
you he smiled ; oh ! such a happy smile.
There is only one thing that speaks a universal

language — that is a smile.

139

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

I was perfectly delighted with the Nord
express till I grew suddenly suspicious, ex-
actly two hours later, at the dinner-table and
asked whether I was not running by train
somewhere to Chicago or Pittsburg. The
people at the table were all Americans, who
talked in terribly nasal voices (believe me I
left Japan only fifty days ago, where people
are taught to speak a language of golden
silence) on the price of chickens and pigs.
And goodness knows what else they talked.
I left half-way through table d'hote and
hurried back to my compartment, and tried
my best to dream of dear old smoky London
(one says she is not as smoky as she used to
be) and whom I was to meet after an absence
of ten years.

The Channel was extremely rough, as I ex-
pected, and again, as I expected, I was ill.
The old smiling boy (beware of the old smiling
boy, all of you) came to me almost every two
minutes. " Ten minutes, sir, to Dover," he
eventually announced and smiled. Beware
again of the old smiling boy, all of you. He
came soon and announced : " Five minutes,
sir, just only five minutes, sir." Why, how
stupid I was, not seeing his hint for tips ! I
examined my purse. Alas ! I had only one

penny, and other money all in gold. I picked

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out the copper and put it in his palm and

looked up into his old face, which smilingly

and silently asked whether I was fooling him.

Certainly, I thought, he had right to object to

that one penny. Then I picked out one half

sovereign, with which he played a moment

with trembling fingers and then he looked

up smilingly and silently to me, and then,

again, smilingly and silently, at the coin.

" Take it, please," I said, as I thought I had

no right to make him change it to small

money, because it was not a matter of buying

and paying.

It was already dark when the train began

to move. I felt as if something like a boa or

huge serpent was crawling through the jungle.

The sense of time and direction had all been

lost under the heavy mantle of dark clouds or

rocks. I could never think, I confess, that I

was coming to the city of my dream. If I

was on my way to any city at all it might be,

I thought, Thompson's "City of Dreadful

Night," surrounded on three sides by a horrible

desert and on the fourth side by a black sea

on which no ship ever came ; where one's life

and memory, as Thompson has it in the

poem, " swoon in the tragic acts." The bare

trees of the roadside against the dark sky

looked as if a sentinel was guarding the pass

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI
to hell. While I was wondering where in the
world I should reach, the train stopped, and
my ears were at once deafened by a terrible
burst of noise. I knew that I had reached
London after all — the city where I was going
to east the chance of my Eastern gondola of
soul against a high tide of the West.

I left the train and already I was in the
Strand, where I wrote some ten years ago :

" My soul,
A ghost from the unknown air, a fay

from the mist into the mist.
Strays down the torrent of life."

The hotel which was recommended by my
friend I found to be frightfully noisy. When
I put down my things in the room where I
was taken by the hotel attendants I deter-
mined to leave the hotel right off; and as it
was on my own account, I left the price of
the room at the office. I took a taxi to my
friend's house. As it was a short distance the
charge was less than one shilling ; but 1 threw
down half-a-crown, as I had no smaller money.
I felt perfectly reckless ; and I thought it
was jolly to act foolishly sometimes !

The next little hotel was found to be quiet.

As soon as I got in the room I took away all

the Western clothes and changed to my be-

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loved Japanese nightgown, and sought the
bed at once. I put the light out, and shut
my eyes, and tried to sleep — but in vain.
" What use to sleep upon such an early even-
ing, being really and truly arrived in London
after ten long years ? " I exclaimed. And I
again dressed up in the Western clothes ; and
I soon found myself walking slowly towards
Trafalgar Square.

My friend artist, the late Hara, used to
point to his picture of the winter-night view
of that square, and sadly dwell on what a
failure the picture was when he thought of
the subject in imagination, even from Japan.
Putting aside Hara's picture, indeed the night
scenery of the square would be the hardest
thing to paint. Oh, what a colour in air or
mist ! Is it purple ? or is it grey ? or is it
dark? What is it? "Why, it is the very
colour of rubies," I exclaimed.

What an activity, what a crowd in Picca-
dilly Circus ! Where are these people going,
and what purpose have they? I wonder. I
walked along the streets (I do not know what
streets they were), as the other people walked.
Presently I felt a terrible pain in my legs. I
was walking on different roads from those of
Japan. The hard pavements made my legs

senseless. "Oh, where is the real ground —

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

where the kind earth I wish to touch?" I
exclaimed.

I slipped into St. James's Park. When my
feet really touched the real ground I felt there
was something soft underneath. " Why, green
grass, even in winter here ! Oh ! green grass
in December."

II

*' Oh, tell me, has London changed much,
do you think ? "

This question had been asked a hundred
times in a day ever since my feet stepped
in London. Why are the Englishmen get-
ting such a silly habit to ask questions like
Americans ? Changed ? Only goodness knows
how changed London is. I confess that I
could not trust my eyes ; not only my eyes,
but also my ears, my nose, even my tongue.
I felt I was perfectly baffled, because London
of my imagination was found not existing.
Indeed, those ten years (that is the years I
was away from London) are long enough to
make any change in the world you wish to
have changed. What the biggest change I
notice, do you ask me ? The biggest change
is that nearly all the English women are

found turning into French women. In what

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way, you may ask me ? In all sorts of ways,
from their mane to their dress. They are
growing so charming indeed, even a little
saucy hat is perfectly becoming to them.
And their little skirts make them certainly
ten years younger.

And how about the men ? you ask.

The men are growing Americanised.
Whether it is a matter sad or happy is
another question. I am glad that they are
now wearing a much nicer shoe, and they
are not so particular with their sticks. That
is quite American. I well remember, I was
much afraid, when I was here from America
ten years ago, to speak before the English-
men, because my English was not King s
English, but the English which I picked up
from the American prairie. Besides, I could
not well understand those Englishmen's Eng-
lish, which sounded to me then to be some-
thing like a devil's language, with such an
accent which might come from the bottom
of their feet. But they speak, I find now,
the English so plainly and clearly. It may
be that the speaking with a Cockney emphasis
might be now out of fashion ; and it be-
came, I fancy, more democratic. Demo-
cratic ? Indeed, the Englishmen grew quite
democratic in many other things ; they stopped

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

wearing the high hats so recklessly as they
used to wear them ten years ago. That is
good, too, because the high hat has truly
regained now its original dignity; I should
say it was the matter absurd when even a
shop-boy walked down a street with a high
hat like a stage comedian who lost his own
cue to exist. Let me drink to the high
hat's long life. It is now in the place
where it should be ; it only belongs to the
right person.

Oh, how the streets grow Americanised.
But on the other hand they have lost their
own old picturesqueness, which only belonged
to the truly old country. I have nothing to
say against their becoming much cleaner;
however, it is perfectly sad to see that they
are mostly disfigured by some sort of advertise-
ment. It is a matter certainly for congratu-
lation that the " Underground " ceased to
smell horrible. But look at those advertise-
ments which are painted on both walls of the
tunnel. Oh, if they could be replaced by
flowers I

And where is my old friend the 'bus-driver,
who once, quite ten years ago, frightened me
by pointing out the streets where Johnson
used to walk with his colleagues ? Oh, where
is his red, dear, large, drunken face? And

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where is the red handkerchief which was care-
lessly tied around his big neck ? How I wished
to sit by him upon the garden seat of the old
'bus and hear the sound when his whip clacked.
Look at the auto-'bus drivers to-day, who wear
caps fit even for a soldier. Oh, what a differ-
ence I

My imagination always saw the great fogs
of London from whose dark mantle the lights
would shine like a demon's eyes ; I thought
that it might be interesting to see the day
which would pass as a night, and feel, as
Dickens wrote, that Nature lived hard by
and was brewing on a large scale. Who
says that the fogs are growing lighter every
year ? Oh, what makes them so ? And is
not the Christmas feehng too growing rather
simpler? And again on the other hand is
not the religious devotion also becoming
weaker ?

The other day I happened to be in St.
Paul's Cathedral to spend a good hour, as I
made a mistake about the time of an appoint-
ment at **Ye olde Cheshire Cheese" (oh,
London is the same dear old London, with
this cosy little place) ; into the Cathedral I
stole like a tired ghost or a piece of leaf fallen
from the City's noise. Oh, what a difference
between the within and without 1

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THE STOEY OF YONE NOGUCHI

'^ A sanctum of shadows where dusk-robed Solitude
Steps from thought to thought, a breeze forgotten by
Life and Song."

I was so glad to see quite a number of
people (besides the American tourists) who sat
still like a Buddha monk in meditation, doubt-
less in the silent communion with the invisible
and holy. Was I mistaken, I thought, in my
saying that the English religious feeling had
been waning ? To say that the Cathedral was
changed would sound to you ridiculous; but
it is a fact. I thought ten years ago that the
glittering gold of the decoration in the interior
was certainly cheap, at least to our Japanese
mind ; that gold that made me think less of the
Cathedral has turned now to such a quite old
gold, or colour of the moon upon the Indian
seas. What a splendid change that is I

I left the Cathedral, and looked round,
standing upon the steps, like a bird almost
ready to fly. An English gentleman ap-
proached me, touching his silk hat, and said :

"Are you not in any trouble with the
streets ? Can I be of any service to you, sir ?
I believe you are the Japanese Poet who has
just arrived."

Oh, to be recognised in the street even by

a stranger ! Did I feel much flattered ? My

mind at once dwelt at that moment on the

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sweetness of the English heart. If there is a
thing that will never change, I declare, that
would be the real English gentleman.

Ill

Once I showed my little daughter, five
years old, an English Reader with a few
fairies (or faeries, if you like) ; her mind of
curiosity-loving could not be satisfied with
my uncertain answers to her question. At
the moment of my departure she pulled my
sleeve of kimono, and looked up to my face,
and said : " Papa, you must write me from
London, when you see any real fairy there.
I cannot read letters, but mamma will read
it for me. Write me a long letter about
the fairy if she ever spoke to you in London
streets."

What have I to write my daughter now,
when I saw one at the Lyceum ? Would she
be satisfied, I wonder, if I tell her it was
the wand of the fairy that worked all sorts
of magics? Certainly she would write back
to me saying that I should buy that particu-
lar wand from the fairy and bring it home.
Oh, I wish I could get that wand. How
glad I would be if I could show my little
daughter what Ray and Zack, the sweetest

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things ever I saw on the stage, had seen
already, all those marvels and beauties of the
Fairyland ! Look at the gorgeous-coloured
chrysanthemums, azaleas, poppies, bluebells,
daffodils and many other flowers ; and look
again at what sort of people lived in this
enchanting valley. Didn't a certain Miss
Grannie Pickford dance gracefully? But
Robert Roberty was altogether too strenu-
ous for my Japanese taste. You can imagine
how frightened I was, almost as frightened
as Ray and Zack on the stage, seeing his
whirlwind motion of running rather than
dancing. It seems that I must modify my
opinion of dancing since I came to London.
What changes of sceneries in this most
innocent, most j oiliest Babes in the Wood.
I was highly pleased to be soon introduced to
the happy village of Appledale, where all the
inhabitants had to dress in picturesque fantasy
and only dance and sing (wouldn't it be amus-
ing to become one of them, and not worry
about life's reality) ; and even Squire Snatch-
all, I dare say, was rather delightful, although
he declared at once : " Before I speak, allow
me to say 1 am the vile villain of this
play." Oh, what a wonderful declaration
that is ! Here comes Marmaduke, the Pro-
digal Son, who thought he might have been a

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squirrel as his father was a Squire and his
mother a Squiress, returning from college (he
never said what college), but he was quite
clever to answer many questions in the scene
of the schoolroom. He was asked, " Where
is Germany ? " He answered, '* In England."
And, besides, he said many more almost
vulgar things. Is it not perfectly out of place,
I thought, for this play of harmless amusement
to have such a fun-making in conversation?
It is a thing which should go to a variety
house, for it hurts the other beauties of
the pantomime (whatever meaning it may
have) in its songs and stage-sceneries. I con-
fess that I didn't expect from it such a be-
wilderment or medley of play, which reminded
me of a Christmas pudding, rich in its own
taste but rather difficult for a stranger to
locate what it might be. I like Christmas
pudding very well ; though it might be a poor
argument, 1 should say that for the same
reason I like this play, which bears the name
of pantomime only to make me understand.

Why 1 it has nothing about pantomime.
It is a juvenile comic opera or a comic opera
of ragtime merriment. (You have ragtime
here in England, although that funny Mar-
maduke declared that he had it in America.)

Again I say, " Can I eat Christmas pudding

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all the year round?" As I can only eat it
once in a year, I should be greatly pleased to
see the pantomime perhaps once a year ; surely
my head would grow dizzy when I had to see
it too often. But how jolly it is to see it once
a year at Christmas, and return for men to
their days of boyhood and for boys to a
thought of fairyland. It is never difficult
to see why men as well as boys could enjoy
this Babes in the Wood, but from a different
point.

I would like to take my little son at home
to see Stopum and Copum. I do not know
which was the fatter. He would be tickled
to death when he saw such a large policeman,
who can even dance happily. Aren't Rob
and Plunder, the bold robbers, wonderful to
do this shameless work from receiving a few
pence ? It was the part most pleasing of the
play that even the robbers could play some
instrument and sing. But I was disappointed
not finding a pantomime here.

On Boxing Day night (really I do not

know what that means) I found myself at old

Drury Lane, the " Home of Pantomimes,"

again not to find any pantomime there. In

the Sleeping Beauty we had such a cunning

little fairy boy called Puck, with horns on his

head, which looked like those of a lobster.

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And, besides, there was a wicked fairy by
the name of Anarchista using the most fairy-
like language. How beautifully Marcella,
the Sleeping Beauty, sang when she finally
awoke.

The play, or show, was perfectly marvellous,
perhaps far more marvellous than Babes in the
Wood, with those pretty girls in dancing or
singing; I can hardly imagine how they had
been trained. And what wonderful sceneries 1
It was the Duke of Monte Blanco that slept
eighteen years; and I, the writer of this
article, slept ten years, and am now awakened
again in London at this Christmas time. And
I am glad to be at this Drury Lane and taken
by dear Puck to roam into Fairyland.

IV

"Oh, what a lovely complexion of these
English women," I cannot help exclaiming.
We have a Japanese proverb that the fair
skin always hides seven blemishes in the face ;
how envious the Japanese women should be
if they see the real English complexion — the
most famous in all the world 1 And what a
delightfully quick gait of the English women,
what an eloquent charm ! Oh 1 what a
rhythm in it. And, above all, what a shape

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

they have ! My friend, an artist, who re-
turned home after studying in England,
always exclaimed : *' It's perfectly hopeless
to make anything good out of the Japanese
women with such a poor shape awfully tor-
tured from the habit of sitting and bowing.
Look at the English women, whose straight
forms look even proud, as if they have a
personal responsibility for the universe ! Oh,
what a life in them I Perhaps you have seen
an English actress in a Japanese play (are we
Japanese thankful for it, or not ? that is the
question), imitating the Japanese woman
particularly in her mincing gait. We cannot
blame her, as our women walk as she imi-
tates."

The other night I happened to talk with
one clever Japanese lady here (I can assure
you there are some clever women even among
the Japanese), who said : " I was mistaken at
first, suspecting that English women's con-
versation was made to hide their own
thoughts. I often thought that they were
fearing their secrets might be discovered.
They had been trying, I thought, to mask
themselves behind a screen ; or perhaps
famous fogs. As I said to you, it was my
great mistake. When I became more ac-
quainted with them, their frankness and sin-

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cerity became more clear to be seen. How-
ever, they are intellectual ; I always feel that
they are ever bent on improving my own
poor mind." Then I asked her whether her
mind had been improving. She smiled and
declared that, whatever might happen, she
should remain savage.

When I was here last I was told by a lady
in her drawing-room that the English women
were nothing but vanity, and I was assured
by some fifty-fifth Duchess of Something that
they were always martyrs to formality and
etiquette. How are they now? I can re-
member clearly how I was afraid (that is ten
years ago) of this self-esteem and cool re-
serve ; but my experiences of the last ten or
fifteen days tell me that it was the exact case,
quite reverse. I am having the time of my
life, I confess, in talking with the English
women at some receptions (however, I do not
like the late hour for receptions), or by a
supper table, where topics are delightfully
light but without being vulgar; they are
charmingly vivacious. And this epigram-
matic turn of language and paradox ? Why,
if you blame it, you are certainly to blame
Shaw and Chesterton. Yes, they are the
teachers, are they not ? The English women

are wise and healthy; better still, they are

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

quite simple. Such are the very points indeed
I like in them.

I was mistaken when I thought that we are
not supposed to expect anything interesting
in first-class society. Although I cannot say
I have seen it, I am glad to say (at least from
what I have seen) that the English women
carry their family history and a fat morocco-
covered Bible quite lightly. And the most
charming part with them is that, not only do
they know how to talk, but also very well
understand how to listen to the others, and
besides, how to raise and drop their eyelashes.
I often read in a book that it is the custom in
English society for each to monopolise one
woman, because she does not know how to be
charming to a whole party. Now I think
that such is a groundless accusation. In
truth, what a delightful art the English
women show in the reception-room ; again,
what a delightful art of theirs.

It is certainly a great treat to see them
tastefully dressed. I often walk down the
streets with one purpose, and that is to look
at them. (I am sure they do not blame me
for such a devotion.) But I confess that I
had rather a poor opinion of them ten years
ago; I even laughed and denounced their
poor taste in dressing. I said then : " These

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English women hardly know how to raise
their own skirts." They have nothing to
do with their skirts now, since they wear
such a light one which makes them look
quite lovely, even coquettish. These ten
years, it seems to me, taught them a great
deal of dressing. And they have learnt well,
I should like to say. I remember I had
written, ten years ago, to my friend at home
that the English women wore such ugly
shoes (or boots, if you like), and their
ankles might not have been charming enough
to expose; but I should like to know now
where is a woman whose shoes might be
the subject to laugh at. Oh, what lovely
shoes they wear now.

Not only in the matter of dressing, but
their faces (of course, their shape and mane),
had become much more attractive. To say
they are as fresh as a daisy does them hardly
any justice, since the daisy is more a flower
of the countryside. I should like to compare
them with chrysanthemums, which have
recently been much beautified by horti-
culturists. The general culture improved
their unsightly appearance. And what
beautiful hair they have 1 It is said in
Japan that woman's hair is always strong
enough to pull an elephant. Where is a

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

thing, I wonder, that an Enghsh woman
cannot pull by her hair?

Although I never pretend to be a critic
of women, I think I can say that I can
see many more beautiful woman in five
minutes in Bond Street than in any other
place in the world.

I have during my present stay in England
many incidents which, little as they are,
shall not be forgotten. The following is
one of them: As I had some important
business to see a friend upon when I was
in Oxford, I thought it proper to telegraph
to him beforehand. I handed to the clerk
of the neighbouring post-office a paper with
writing to the effect that I should arrive
at Puttington at half-past seven that night.
Then I returned to my place and was busy
making ready for my departure when the
same clerk to whom I had given my message
called on me with my telegraph paper to
ask if I was not mistaken, as there was no
train by which I would arrive at Puttington
at half-past seven from Oxford. It most
forcibly struck my Japanese mind that this

act was the sweetest proof of English con-

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BEAUriFUL WOMKN- IS BOND STREET

AGAIN IN LONDON

sideration, a thing that we never could even
imagine in red-tape Japan. When I began
truly to appreciate that heart of consideration,
official or private, my reverence for great
England at once increased a hundredfold.
I took my hat off before this old European
civilisation because of its ow^n worthiness.

I confess, however, what mostly troubled
my peace of mind was the matter of religion.
I was tired presently with the hopeless
aspect of the dirty Thames as would be any
Japanese with, so to say, the heart of moon,
flowers and wind. One day I went up the
river to seek poetry in nature. And my
object in straying into Putney was my
faint desire to see Swinburne's old house as
I once saw him somewhere in a picture,
sitting in the grass of his back garden. It
was my misfortune that I asked a clergyman
to direct me to the right road, who began
to talk on Christianity with such an earnest-
ness, when I replied to him that I was a
Buddhist. I was almost in danger of being
converted on the spot, not because I was
inspired by him, but because that seemed
the only way to stop his speech. When
we parted he held my hand firm and said :
" We shall meet again in heaven."

When I was brought into Oxford, I found
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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

that the holy Cross was staring on my heathen
soul with great pity from those twenty and odd
college buildings. The solemnity of thirty
and more churches practically jammed in
such a small place as only the districts of
Ushigome and Koishikawa of Tokyo com-
bined, chilled my Oriental heart, and made
me think it difficult to associate with Chris-
tianity. I did not take many days before I
discovered what power the priests had,
publicly or privately, in England. While
many exceptions should be allowed in this
matter of religion as any other thing, one
can say quite safely that the English religious
belief is still unshaken. Let the non-believers
declare whatever they wish. The general
conservatism of English faith has much to
do with forming the manly part of England's
civilisation.

Once I was a guest of a well-known scholar
whose youngest boy of years always put the
house in an uproar by his raging. He was
ready to fight with his elder sister, holding up
a pen-holder, when I entered the parlour.
The mother suddenly appeared to rescue the
girl, and scolded the boy, who cried loudly,
saying that she was wrong, not he. The
mother smiled, and asked him, with a few
gentle taps on his head, if he was a Christian.

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When he said he was, she put a further
question if he knew well what was next to
'' Give us our daily bread " in the Lord's
Prayer. The boy made a guilty face at once,
and threw away the pen-holder as his childish
soul wished to repent. I thought, then, it
was the most beautiful picture ever I had seen
since I came into England. It is too heavy
a question whether it is the happiest way to
bring up children, but I have little hesitation
to affirm there is more good than harm in it.

I can say I saw first in my life what the
**home" really means in England, since it
has yet in Japan to be cultivated more con-
scientiously. I observed clearly that the best
effort was given for its development. My
own experience with the English home was of
the sweetest kind ; the open-heartedness and
simplicity which are the best entertainment
prevail in verily satisfactory fashion. Even
the way of spreading round the things artistic
or otherwise, which bewildered my Japanese
sense of art, more glad to use the " poetry of
concealment" to advantage, soon began to
encourage my psychological turn of mind for
the better understanding of the English tem-
perament. The seeming childishness is de-
cidedly a strength, while the Japanese art of
humility in hiding proves more often to be

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THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

hypocritic. I cannot help laughing over the

little comedies I enacted in spite of myself,

when I could not wholly forget that the

Japanese way of etiquette is not to emphasize

one's likes, or more important to observe, to

speak but moderately of the things you dislike.

Once I was brought into an uncomfortable

situation when I let a word of enthusiasm slip

over a cheese before me, in truth, without

much thought, and I was obliged to look jolly

with various kinds of cheese which appeared

taking my word for a pledge. It was truly a

good dose to cure the weakness of Oriental

etiquette which is at best only foolishness. I

make it my custom to warn myself not to

demonstrate my Japanese way of politeness,

which always turns out wrong. The Japanese

mind, like any other Japanese thing, only

works upside down to that of Englishmen.

I am not ready to discuss the respective

merits of English and German people on the

subject of musical taste ; but I will say that

the popularisation of music is more thorough

in England than in Germany. I have had

such a difficulty to excuse myself from being

well cornered into singing a song or two. I

often wonder if there is another people like

the Japanese, especially the Japanese of the

younger generation, whose lack of musical

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culture is appalling. I could not make myself

so obliging as my friend M , who always

sang the National Anthem whenever he was
asked for a Japanese song. I have only to say
that I could not help admiring his courage
in singing it. I agree with all the English
people that music is most necessary to make
the ** evening" successful. I have often
thought that they are almost scientific in
making it happy. And how obliging they are
to one another for that purpose ! I had a few
occasions, like any other Japanese, when I
acted even admirably a big feature of the
"evening." The comical side of the affair
that even I myself pretended to be something
wonderful under the circumstances cannot be
forgotten all my life. What jolly harmless
English people !

The other day I read in a Japanese magazine
a humorous article written by M. O., how he,
with his friend, played a most difficult role as
" Japanese experts " of the Go game at the
Hastings and St. Leonards Chess Club. (So
he too I) I wish to see his uncomfortable face
when his picture was printed, of course, as the
famous Go player, in the Hastings newspaper.
1 sympathise with him when he tried his ut-
most to look serious, while he was playing a

** game of conspiracy " with his friend before

163

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the people. I think I have no right whatever
to tell his secret to English readers.

I take much interest in all questions, poli-
tical as well as social ; my Orientalism did not
interfere with my enthusiasm over the Woman
Suffragists. I rarely missed reading in the
papers the witty saying or clever repartee which
overflows from the debates in the Houses and
the speeches on the platform, and many of
them are stamped deeply on my mind. I
could not imagine before that the English
freedom of speech had such a full meaning;
it is clear that it was an evidence of English
fearlessness in facing the problems of humanity
and justice. If the English people are loyal
toward their king, that is not because he
happens to sit upon the throne, but because
he is a powerful defender of righteousness and
the people.

And again I will say that if they love their
own country it is only from their unshakeable
belief that she is the first country of the
world. I frequently thought it was rather
silly for them to put that eternally same
'' first in the world " in this and that. Is it
not, I wonder, the most dangerous supersti-
tion of all superstitions? While I admit
that their belief in "first in the world" has

greatly helped to make the country really the

164

AGAIN IN LONDON

first in the world, as in fact she is, I think,
on the other hand, there is a danger for them
in denying any merit to another country.
Not only once, but quite often, I was asked
even by an educated person if we had elec-
tricity and railroads in Japan. We have, 1
think, to blame the English authors of books
on Japan, whose delight and admiration are
only in the things of old Japan.

I have no slightest hesitation to declare
that I had my greatest days at Oxford. It
was perfectly delightful to see there what
a sweet old-fashioned love existed between
the teachers and students. The fact reminded
me of our old feudal times, when Bushido and
Confucian ethics governed the country in the
most respectable way. I am no person fit
for writing of the physical civilisation of the
English people; beside, I have only a little
interest when I compare it with the other
side of humanity. Dear old England with
mother-love and consideration ! It is her
humanity that makes her great in the world.

165

VII

KIOHO NO KI

Home, Sth October 1904.

Japan again ! — kicho after eleven years ! I
left New York in August; and it was the
6th of October when I left Shinbashi, Tokyo,
homeward bound.

I stopped at Fujizawa, where my priest
brother has the Jokoji temple ; with him, I
started to see Enoshima — that enchanted isle
of Benten Sama. It reminded me of a certain
Hy-Brasail of Irish song; oh, is it not an
angel's home rising sudden out of a sacred
water? Then we went to see Daibutsu or
the Great Buddha of Kamakura; how I
wished it stood by the seashore ! Why ?
Daibutsu's mighty profundity in silence and
thought discarding the voice of the sea would
show more sublime.

Under the soft greyness of evening we came
back to the temple ; and I stopped over night
in the Buddhistic quietness which bit my
soul; it was the first experience of my life.
I know that I felt it more than I ought as I

166

KICHO NO KI

was fresh from the noisy American life. Next
morning I was startled from my sleep by
" Gan, gan, gan ! " the sound of a bell ; it
told me that my priest brother was beginning
his morning prayer.

I took the six o'clock train toward Nagoya.
I felt a great disappointment not hearing the
*' swan-like rhapsody of dying night" in Fuji-
san's lotos-peak soaring through the morning
ether. However, I was in a measure com-
forted later at Suzukawa, when he peeped out
from the clouds upon me. There was no
word to express his majesty and grace. I felt
as if I were happily running through a dream-
like garden ; it would not be too much to say
that no other train in the world harvests so
much natural beauty with its wheels as this
Tokaido's.

1 was grateful for the "preservation of a recall
of primeval Nature," the "exemption of the
soil from labour " in Chinju no Mori, a village
shrine ; as it has been said, nothing but " long
ages, respectful care, sometimes fortunate
neglect," could make such an ideal wilderness.
Since it is in the war time, I saw many a
Rising Sun flag among the green trees, beyond
the yellow rice fields; my patriotism jumped
high with the sight of the flag. I felt in my

heart to shout Banzai. The water ran clear,

167

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the birds flew up and down. I thought there
could be no other country like Japan so
beautiful. I reached Tsushima, my native
town, at evening.

I frightened my old father at the station,
who was actually trying to find me among
some other people. There is no wonder that
he could not recognise me; I must have
changed a great deal. *' We must make a
thanking worship immediately to Tenno Sama ;
I have been praying for his protection for you
all the time. It is, of course, through his
divine favour we have you here making a safe
return," he exclaimed.

My mother was crying before she spoke.
I wept too.

** How glad you came home ! I was afraid
we might not see you any more. And how
you have changed, Yone Ko ! You almost
look like a Seiyojin, your nose and eyes just
like those of a Western-sea man. Oh, how
glad — you have returned finally ! "

And she cried again.

My arrival was reported speedily among
the people of Nakajima Cho, my street ;
the old men and women from the neighbour-
ing houses, and the friends of my boyhood
days, who were now the fathers of many
children, began to call on me. They couldn't

168

KICHO NO KI

raise their heads from reverence and fear
before me; what gentle souls. I could not
help crying secretly when Oito San, the old
lady neighbour, said that Okuwa Sama — my
mother's name — used to say she wished to
die after having seen me once again.

How sweet is home !

I tasted the best thing ever I had in my
life in a simple dinner which my mother
prepared.

The president of the Tsushima Grammar
School called on me at night, and wished me
to make a speech before his students. The
younger people of my street were all for
giving a dinner in my honour. All the
guests left my house at about ten o'clock.
Before I went to bed, I was calmly rubbed
by a shampooer.

I went to sleep to the lullaby of pine trees
which the gentle winds sent to me ; I knew
it came from Kojoji, my neighbouring temple,
and it was a familiar sound too.

Home, 10th.

I was no other than Rip Van Winkle,
only not so romantic as Joseph Jefferson's.
I could not recognise even my elder brother
who was waiting to receive me at the Yoko-
hama station ; and I will say too that the
glance he cast upon me was perfectly in-

169

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

different. We got in the same train toward
Tokyo ; at Shinbashi I found out that he
was my brother Fujitaro, when he joined
with a party in which I recognised at once
Madame Isonaga, the lady who used to
look after me with motherly care ; the party
was meant for my honour.

There is no wonder at all if I did not
recognise even one person in my neighbouring
houses, as I had not been home for over
seventeen years. It was O Maki San, really
— my neighbour's girl, who used to dress her
hair in girlish mitsuwa or " three rings " in the
dear old days — now the mother of three
children. Who was that young man who
said, ** It's a long time now, Yone Sama — " ?
Why, he was Kii San, the son of the carpenter
Hanroku San. He was only six or seven
years old, when I was in my tenth or eleventh
year; I used to take him with me to Rodo
San's to be taught penmanship. He is not a
boy now, but the proud father of two children.
**Do you remember this picture of Daikoku
Sama (God of Luck) you drew for me such a
long time ago?" — thus I was addressed by
one person ; and he was Hikobey San's Hiko
San, the child I loved best. I used to give
him my pictures of orchid or chrysanthemum ;

and I remember now that I was once scolded

170

KICHO NO KI

by my mother when I showed her a large
piece of shuzumi or red ink which he gave me
by way of acknowledgment of my pictures.
"You mustn't receive anything from such a
little child," my mother said ; I remember it
as if it were only yesterday. "You grew
pretty large," I said. "Yes, I married last
spring," he answered.

1 am told that two young men of our street
are at the front ; and one of them has been
wounded already, and now he is in the Nagoya
hospital ; and the other is the adopted son of
the neighbour on the left hand. Although
his mother-in-law patriotically submitted, say-
ing, "It is for our country's sake," I could
clearly espy her voiceless complaint; her
daughter, the wife of her soldier son, is sick in
bed while her two children cry. Oito San is
a diligent person as my mother says ; as I
hear, she is working since morning on her
loom for a new kimono ; and T am sure it may
be meant for her son on his safe return.

A while ago my father brought me an
official announcement to read for him ; it was
to bid us make our presence to see the soldiers
off to the front. Let us give them words of
glory; they may be killed or wounded, if
lucky.

Last night we all lighted our front gate
171

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

lanterns to express our joy over the Lio Yang
victory. We do not make any noise even in
joy ; and are facing the war with such a silence
which is only the voice of life and death.

Kami Sama or the gods do not undergo any
worldly change of fortune ; but at a time like
this their glory reaches high water mark. It
goes without saying that to say Kami Sama
here at Tsushima means Gozu Tenno. The
big wood fires will be burned right before the
shrine all night ; the daily worshippers, doubt-
less the relations of soldiers at the front, are
said to be more than five hundred. A few
sen will make you the happy possessor of an
omamori or charm which will very likely pro-
tect your fighters from bad luck; and a
special prayer will be given to you on your
appeal.

This Tsushima is a slight town snugly lying
as if on the bottom of a basin ; but her dream
has been stirred considerably by the establish-
ment of a railroad station where the strange
people from another part of the country flow
out as if through a break in a dyke. The
Middle School added a new dignity to the
town ; and the Tsushima Grammar School is
said to be the model in this Aichi province.
That school I can see from my upstairs
window ; and I have been looking with a

172

KICHO NO KI

strange feeling of interest over the rows of
little girls' heads now for some while. Listen,
what are they singing ? Even the girls must
sing the war songs nowadays. What lovely
voices! I felt glad to think that they did
not loose their girlish beauty of voice in such
a thrilling stir.

I can see also through the upstairs shoji one
big pine tree of Kojoji wherein, it is said,
many a hitodama or human soul looking like a
ladle with lantern-like light went floating in
just before the day of death ; it is the very
tree, where, as my mother observed, my
sister's hitodama disappeared one or two
evenings before her final sleep.

Poor little Tsune who died in her ninth
year ! I have to beg her forgiveness for many
things. I was a terrible boy, full of mad
mischief, I believe.

Kyoto, 28<A.

To see the beauty of a Japanese autumn,
it is said, you must come to Kyoto; and I
was just in time, to my joy. The evening
light is certainly sweet in autumn with
longer night; and I am pleased to be in
Kyoto with andon and candle-sticks ; they
are the sweetest of lights.

Here I feel as if I had flown back to the

sixteenth century — the dear age of slow life,

173

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

half song and half sorrow; what a contrast
to Tokyo, to America! We are trying
hard to hide our weariness of the modern
civilisation ; but one cannot help exclaiming
in delight over such a perfectly undisturbed
oasis as Kyoto, where you can sing the oldest
song, and let the world go by as it pleases.
Our modern Japan is going mad over every
sort of Western thing ; but Kyoto is singing
alone the song of protest.

" How stout you did grow," I said to
Mr. Taki, the son of a rich Nagoyo mer-
chant, who is managing his father's business
at Kyoto. He was one of my best friends
in my middle school days ; he was awaiting
me at the station. " I knew at once it was
you by your sharp eyes," he said.

I wanted for some time to see the grace-
fully gracious shape of Higashi Yama, which,
as some well-known poet wrote, looks a sleep-
ing beauty under a futon or quilt. 1 de-
cided at once that I must take a walk this
evening at least as far as to get a sight of the
mountain. When I was startled by the
sudden music of water — why, is this Kamo
Gawa? The sleeping mountain was right
before me. You impolite thing, it's not the
Japanese way at all to receive a guest lying
like that. But I will excuse you. The

174

KICHO NO KI

moon rose. I thought it quite lucky to see,
as I stood on the bridge over Kamo Gawa,
the same moon which was sung and sung by
the thousand uta poets, those nobles and
princesses of Japan's golden age — it is a
long time ago now.

Next day, I with Mr. Taki started to
Arashi Yama to see the beauty of autumn ;
and I found it there in splendour. What a
wonder — the most rare sight of the moun-
tain and river through the tinted mists of
momiji or maple leaves, the mists now floating
anear, as if addressing us, now sailing afar as
if singing the sad song of farewell. I felt I
saw a certain tennin or angel in the leaves,
which, to disappoint me, turned at once to a
cloud moving terribly ; it might be that the
heart-burned leaves exchanged speech with the
passing wind.

We engaged three men, presently, to push
the boat up the valley ; the water was so rapid
that they were obliged to pull it by a rope ;
and it often stopped to bite the rock like a
dog. We turned the head of our boat back
at Hotsugawa, where we invited three moun-
tain girls to ride down with us; they were
doubtless going to Kyoto to sell the dry
brushwood which they carried; they are an

owarame whose rustic yet poetical simplicity

175

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

is known over Japan. The youngest and
prettiest of them began busily to arrange her
hair by the looking-glass of the water, soon
after we started ; I thought she wanted to
look her very best as she would soon reach
Kyoto, or it might not be impossible that
her lover was awaiting her, perhaps at Koto-
kiki Bashi. About this bridge I should like
to explain briefly. It was just here, it is
believed, that Nakakuni, the imperial mes-
senger to the Lady Kogo, the beloved mistress
of the Emperor Takakura no In — she had
hidden herself from the jealousy of Taira no
Kiyomori, the father of the Empress — the
story is quite an old one — heard the Lady
Kogo's playing of koto music at last. Indeed
he had sought her there one moon night in
the very thought that she would play it long-
ing after the sweet days of the past. Hence
this name Kotokiki Bashi, the Koto- Hearken
bridge. It would be idle to ask about the
truth of such a thing ; but it is sure that
she — poor Lady Kogo — hid herself under the
momiji of Saga's deeper hills, where you might
say with Sarumaru Dayu ;

" How sad is autumn, —
When you hear the deer's cry,
With his hoofs upon the maple leaves,
Amid the deeper hill !

176

KICHO NO KI

We dined this night at Hyotei, the unique
tea-house in the silent ground of the Nanzenji
temple. When we left the house, plenty of
stars shone, and the moon was soon expected.
The purple light of a Kyoto star is the purple
colour you will find in Kyoto*s yuzenzome —
design of girl's clothes ; oh, what beauty I
The girl of the restaurant gave us a little
lantern with the roughly drawn picture of
a gourd (by the way, Hyotei means the
" Gourd House " ) to light the darkness of
night. On the way to Mr. Taki's house I
felt I heard a sad music of the stars — perhaps
the koto music of the Lady Kogo.

I couldn't help thinking of her.

Naea, 2nd November.

Now I am in a far older city than Kyoto :
Nara, the capital of the eighth century, with
its avenues of lichen-patched stone lanterns,
and with a hundred temple bells echoing
down the calm groves, an Olympus of uta
poem and art in those lyric ages of Japan.
I smelled at once the classical odour of uta
which is, however, not more than a sigh; I
wondered why I did not bring with me the
Manyoshu (the first and most esteemed antho-
logy of verse of that century), or any uta
book at least. And I was making my
177 M

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

presence in a yqfuku or foreign dress — such
a modern informal sack coat! — I thought
that eboshi and shitatare which were worn
by the courtiers in those days were the
proper outfit for such an old city of incense
and dream. I sought any book of uta at
a bookshop on Sanjo ; instead, I found a
worn copy of FitzGerald's Rubdiydt of Omar.
But I thought that the dear old man would
not find this place entirely uncongenial ; surely
he could make a paradise with the help of
a lady and sake out of this tired city.

There is no more pleasing sight than those
deer with the peaceful eyes ; they must be
the same peaceful eyes as those of the deer
who, it is said, brought the god Kasuga
Myojin here. I was perfectly happy that
they did not look at me with any scornful
look. I fed them with senbes which I
bought from a girl who was selling them
for this purpose. I walked under the cedars
and pines, now having the deer before me,
now after me; I even ventured to imagine
that I might be a Kasuga Myojin. Indeed,
I thought that here the silent spirit of a
god is visible as a mist, and it was not
impossible to grasp it by the hand. I always
believed that the colour of silence should
be green, while red is the colour of faith ;

178

KICHO NO KI

here I saw the red-painted shrine amid the
green leaves.

The three little girls danced for me a
shinto dance; I was given by the official
attendant of the shrine a slip of paper with
the name of the god written on it, and a
little bit of rice wrapped in a paper. They
were such a trifling thing; but I did not
dare to throw them on the roadside. If I
did, I was afraid some evil would hold
me up.

I bought a few combs and hairpins made
out of the horns of the deer, as souvenirs. I
will tell you that nobody — not even the
souvenir-sellers — will tell any story on this
holy ground.

Daibutsu or the Great Buddha of Nara
was far bigger than that at Kamakura ; I
could not understand how the Japanese who
made such an immense idol in the old days
came to be considered clever only with small
things. The Buddhism which teaches you a
big religion must have a big thing materially,
I fancy.

A few sen gave me a right to strike
Daibutsu's bell hanging at the tower; I
struck it. ''Boon, boon, boon!'' What
sorrow and profundity in the sound ! The
voice of the bell is the voice of Buddhism ; it

179

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHl

echoes adown heaven and earth. I bent my
head, and prayed. Nam amida butsu, nam
amida butsu !

The autumn sun was quickly sinking
when I finished the Tofukuji temple, and
general Nara Kenbutsu, I confess that the
Mikasa hill so famous in the ancient uta was
a disappointment. However, shall I wait to
see the moon on it ?

Now the Daibutsu bell tolled evening;
the birds returned to their nest ; the air of
Nara entered into solemnity from peace. I
was slightly thrilled, and looked back at the
goJLL no to or pagoda on whose top one star
appeared.

" Boon, boon, boon I "

Home, %th.

There are a few moments, at least, when
we have a free breathing space before our
final end ; it was our foolishness, I remember
well, to think that Tsune would live when
she calmly began to talk something, which
was, alas, her good-bye. And so it is with the
year, which will not go without showing her
last beauty before her winter's sleep ; and
that means the maple leaves, of course. The
momiji in our garden, which were planted by
grandfather, are pretty near the last day of

180

KICHO NO KI

their glory ; some leaves are already on the
ground. Ye maples, voiceless singers of the
Japanese autumn, your song is the song of
heart and blood. I always suspect the sin-
cerity of the cherry blossom whose gaiety is
altogether extraordinary. I am with ye,
momiji and autumn ; ye are the soul of the
Japanese poet which is sad. Sadness is a
blessing.

I wished before I made Mcho I could raise
chrysanthemums to my heart's content, stay-
ing at my home ; but it seems now that it is
far too much to wish. And so it may be for
many years more. " You might arrange this
flower in the vase, Yone," my mother said,
and brought a few chrysanthemums from the
garden yard. I received a lesson or two in
the way of flower arrangement ; but I am now
awfully degenerated. The flowers would, if I
touched them, be frightened by the toughness
of my fingers.

" Oh, cold, obarsama ! Give me a padded
kimono ; the snows are falling on Tado moun-
tain," little Yoshi saying, returned from her
school. She is my eldest brother's girl who
is growing under the particular care of her
grandmother. Indeed, the autumn will soon
be done ; since morning I heard the wind sing-
ing on the pine tree of Kojoji ; it seemed to be

181

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

tuning for the winter song. The voice of a
bird was cold too. For the last eleven years
I have been spending myself without any
special attention to spring and autumn; in
fact, the American cities drove Nature out.
But here in Japan, especially at home, I am
again with Nature — dear old thing ! — I can
count every breath of her's; her each step
echoes distinctly on my mind. It is very
difficult, I dare say, not to become a poet in
Japan.

I attended the welcome dinner given to me
by the whole town of Tsushima at evening ;
there were more than two hundred people,
among them the mayor of the town and the
member of the House of Commons whom the
town elected. When I returned home from
the dinner, I found that my mother was
warming my night robe over the fire-box.
Dear mother !

It was my father's voice that I overheard
as he lay in bed : '* It's now one month since
Yone returned home. Really the time seems
short when it's gone; we have been waiting
for eleven years, thinking that he would come
home to-day or to-morrow." "Yes, oh yes 1
He will leave us, he says, on the day after to-
morrow; I think that I will make an ohagi

(a sort of pudding) for him. I remember he

182

KICHO NO KI

used to like it very well," my mother said.
Then I heard again both of them rejoicing
that we — the three other brothers and I — had
turned out mighty good as men. " There's
no greater thing to be proud of for the family,"
they said.

A moment later, my mother called loudly
from beyond the screen : " Shall I give you
one more quilt, Yone Ko? The night is
cold."

I had so many callers next day as my de-
parture was told among the people. Many of
them brought me many letters to be delivered
to their sons in San Francisco or in Chicago ;
doubtless they thought that America is just as
small as Japan, where you can go in a day or
two from one place to another. And some of
them brought a little boy aged seven or eight
hoping I might take him with me to " wonder-
ful Amerikey 1 " They presented me one
thing or another to bid me farewell. Dear
simple country souls !

My father made ready for me plenty of hot

water for the bath tub ; my niece came to me

and said : ** Obarsama said, Uncle, you shall

wash yourself well as this is the last night at

home." '* Yoshi, tell her that I will save some

dirt to come home again and wash it," I

replied.

183

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

My mother was busy making my Idmono
ready in this night.

I am starting for Tokyo to-morrow morning
wearing a kimono and wooden clogs as a
Japanese does. I missed them for such a long
time.

But they are with me again.

184

VIII

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

The arrival of my two-year-old boy, Isamu,
from America was anticipated, as it is said
here, with crane-neck-long longing. This Mr.
Courageous landed in Yokohama on a certain
Sunday afternoon of early March, when the
calm sunlight, extraordinarily yellow, as it
happens to be sometimes, gave a shower
bath to the little handful of a body half-
sleeping in his "nurse carriage," as we call
it here — and, doubtless, half-wondering, with
a baby's first impression of Japan, many-
coloured and ghostly. Now and then he
opened a pair of large brown eyes. ** See
papa"; Leonie tried to make Isamu's face
turn to me ; however, he shut his eyes
immediately without looking at me, as if
he were born with no thought of a father.
In fact, he was born to my wife in California
some time after I left America. Mrs. N

attempted to save me from a sort of morti-

185

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

fication by telling me how he used to sing
and clap his hands for *' papa to come"
every evening.

I thought, however, that I could not
blame him after all for his indifference to
father, as I did not feel, I confess, any
fatherly feeling till, half an hour ago, I
heard his crying voice for the first time by
the cabin door of the steamer Mongolia
before I stepped in ; I was nobody yet,
but a stranger to him. He must have, to
be sure, some time to get acquainted with
me, I thought; and how wonderful a thing
was a baby's cry! It is true that I almost
cried when I heard Isamu's first cry. I
and my wife slowly pushed his carriage
toward the station, I looking down to his
face, and she talking at random. Isamu ap-
peared perfectly brown as any other Japanese

child ; and that was satisfactory. Mrs. N

said that he was brown all over when he
was born; however, his physical perfection
was always a subject of admiration among
the doctors of her acquaintance. I felt in
my heart a secret pride in being his father;
but a moment later, I was really despising
myself, thinking that I had no right what-
ever to claim him, when I did not pay
any attention to him at all for the last

186

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

three years. "Man is selfish," I said in
my heart ; and again I despised myself.

I learned that he made the whole journey
from Los Angeles sitting like a prince on
the throne of his little carriage; he even
went to sleep in it on the steamer. He
was ready to cry out whenever he lost
sight of it ; it was the dearest thing to him,
second only to the bottle of milk, for
which he invented the word "Boo." We
thought that it would be perfectly easy
to take the carriage with us on board the
train, as we could fold it up; but the
conductor objected to our doing so, as it
belonged to the category of "breakables."
And we had to exclaim, "Land of red
tape, again," at such an unexpected turn.
Isamu cried aloud for " Baby's carriage "
when the train reached the Shinbashi station
of Tokyo ; we put him again in his carriage,
and pushed it by Ginza, the main street.
And there my wife and baby had their first
supper in Japan ; Baby could hardly finish
one glass of milk.

It was after eight in the evening when we
took the outer-moat car line toward my house
in Hisakata Machi — quite poetical is this Far-
beyond Street, at least in name — wrapping

Baby's carriage in a large furoshiki. It may

187

THE STOKY OF YONE NOGUCHI

have been from his kindness that the conductor
did not raise objection. But afterward, when
we had to change cars at lidabashi Bridge, we
met again a flat denial to our bringing it in ;
and we had to push it about a mile more of
somewhat hilly road under the darkness. A
few stars in the high sky could not send their
light to the earth ; the road was pretty bad as
it was soon after the snow, though our Tokyo
streets are hardly better at any other time.
And it was rather a cold night. It goes with-
out saying that my wife must have been tired
of nursing Isamu all through the voyage ; he
had been sea-sick, and had eaten almost
nothing. Where was the fat baby which she
used to speak of in her letters ? It was sad,
indeed, to see Isamu, pale and thin, wrapped
in a blanket, keeping quiet in his carriage;
and now and then he opened his big eyes, and
silently questioned the nature of the crowd
which, though it was dark, gathered round
us here and there. His little soul must have
been wondering whither he was being taken.
And we must have appeared to people's eyes
quite unusual. In no more than the dying
voice of an autumn insect. Baby suddenly
asked mother where was his home. I am sure
that not only Isamu, but tired Leonie, too,
wished to know where it was.

188

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

I think that it was not altogether unreason-
able for Baby to keep crying all the time ; I
was rather suspicious, looking at Leonie, that
her heart also wanted a heartful cry from the
heavy, exotic oppression, whose novelty had
passed some time ago. ''Karan, horon, karan,
koron'' — the high-pitched song which was
strung out endlessly from the Japanese
wooden clogs on the pavement, especially in
the station, had that forlorn kind of melody
whose monotony makes you sad ; and I dare-
say Isamu thought that the Japanese speech
might be a devil's speech — in fact, it is, as one
of the earliest Dutch missionaries proclaimed.
I noticed he raised his ears whenever he heard
it. (By the way, he has already come to
handling this devil's speech. My writing was
interrupted awhile ago by his persistent re-
quest— in Japanese — to be taken to see his
Japanese aunt; he is quite happy here as he
can have as many aunts as he wishes.) And
still he did not stop crying even after his safe
arrival at this Hisakata home ; it tried my
patience very much, and I did not know really
what to do with him. He cried on seeing the
new faces of the Japanese servant girls, and
cried more when he was spoken to by them.
I got a few Japanese toys ready for him, a
cotton-made puppy among them, as I was told

189

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

a dog was his favourite ; but he could not
think that they were meant to amuse and not
to hurt him, and the dog did not appear to
him Hke a dog at all, but as something ugly.
And he cried terribly. " OkashiJ' one of the
servants, brought a piece of Japanese cake,
thinking it would surely stop his cry. But he
cried the more, exclaiming, " No, no ! " The
cake did not look to him like a cake.

The night advanced; a blind shampooer
passed before the house, playing a bamboo
flute. Isamu, though he was doubtless sleepy,
caught its music, and jumped out of his little
bed, exclaiming : " Andrew, mama ! " A man
by the name of Andrew Anderson, Leonie
explained, used to call at his California home
almost every evening, and sing to them in a
sweet, high Swedish voice ; so that his little
memories were returning to him. For the
last month, since the day of his departure
from Los Angeles, his poor head had been
whirring terribly through nightmare spec-
tacles. Poor Isamu ! But I felt happy in
thinking that he was just beginning to feel
at home even in Japan.

"Baby, where are you going?" I asked
him, when he was making his way toward
the front door; he stood still by the door,
and caught another note of the shampooer's

190

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

flute, and again cried most happily; '* Oh,
Andrew, Andrew ! " However, he was sad
a few moments later, not seeing any Andrew
come in ; and he began to cry. But sleepiness
overtook him immediately ; and I found him
soon sleeping soundly in his own bed.

When two or three days had passed, he
stopped crying, although he was yet far from
being acquainted with his Japanese home.
I found him trying to find something in the
house which might interest his little mind.
There are many shojis, or paper sliding-doors,
facing the garden ; they have a large piece of
glass fixed up in their centres, over which
two miniature shojis open and shut from right
and left; and they caught his interest. He
had been busy, I was told one day, opening
and shutting them again since the morning ;
when I saw him doing it, he was just exclaim-
ing : " Mama, see boat ! " It was his imagi-
nation, I think, that he caught sight of a
certain ship; he was still thinking that he
was sailing over the ocean on the steamer.
Surely it was that. When he stepped into
the house, I observed that he was quite
cautious about tumbling down; it was very
funny to see his way of walking.

On the fifth day, he earnestly begged his
mother to go home. " Where's Nanna ! " he

191

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

asked her. His grandmother, Mrs. Gilmour,
who still remains in Los Angeles, was called
by Isamu, '' Nanna " ; he began to recall her
to his memory, and to miss her a great deal,
as she was the dearest one next to his mother.
When Leonie answered him "Far far," in
the baby's speech, he repeated it several times
to make himself understand; and he turned
pale and silent at once. He was sad. " Baby,
go and see papa," my wife said to him; he
slowly stole toward my room, and slightly
opened my shoji, when I looked back. He
banged it at once, and ran away crying : '' No,
no ! " I overheard him, a moment later,
saying to Leonie that I was not there. I
must have appeared to his eye as some curio-
sity, to look at once in a while, but never to
come close to. However, I was not hopeless ;
and I thought that I must win him over, and
then he would look at me as he did his
mother.

Isamu noticed that I clapped my hands to
call my servant girls, and they would answer
my clapping with ''Haif' — that is the way
of a Japanese house. And he thought to
himself, of course to my dehght, that it was
proper for him to answer ''Ilai" to my hand-
clapping, and he began to run toward me
before the girls, and kneel before me as they

192

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

did, and wait for my words. I was much
pleased to see that he was growing familiar
with me. And he even attempted to call
me "Danna Sama" (Mr. Lord), catching the
word which the servants respectfully addressed
to me. It was too much, I thought ; however,
I could not help smiling delightedly at it.
My wife could not take to Japanese food at
once ; but I found that Baby was perfectly at
home with it. I discovered, when he quietly
disappeared after our breakfast, that he
was enjoying his second Japanese meal with
the servants. When they objected to him
one morning, I overheard him exclaiming :
" Gohan, gohan' (honourable rice). His love
of Japanese rice was really remarkable.

Every morning, when an ameya, or wheat
gluten seller, the delight of Japanese children,
passed by the house beating his drum musi-
cally, Isamu's heart would jump high, and he
would dance wildly, exclaiming : *' Donko,
don, donko, don, don,'' and get on the back
of a servant — any back he could find quickest
— to be carried like a Japanese child. This
ameya is, indeed, a wonderful man for chil-
dren ; for one sen or so he will make a minia-
ture fox, dog, tengu, or anything imaginable
with wheat gluten.

At first he was not pleased to ride on
193 .. .. N

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the girl's back; but soon it became an

indispensable mode of carriage for him. It

is ready for him any time ; and the Japanese

girl's large obi tied on her somewhat bended

back makes a comfortable seat. And the

funniest part is that Isamu thinks that the

girl's back is called " Donko, don, donko,

don'' As our servants did not know a

word of English, they could not express

their invitation to get on their backs; and

it happened, when an ameya passed by, that

one of them acted as if he were being carried

on her back, repeating the sound of the

ameya s drum: '' Do7iko, don, donko, don.''

Isamu caught the meaning on the spot, and

jumped on her back. And afterward, this

''Donko, don, donko, don," became a most

useful word. When the girls say it, showing

their backs, he thinks it proper, and even

courteous, for him to get on them ; and he

will hunt a girl, repeating it, when he wishes

to go out pick-a-back. And, again, its

usefulness grew still more a day or two

ago; he started to use it even when he

wished only to go for a walk. I heard him

saying to Leonie : " Oh, mamma, donko, don,

donko, don ! "

He showed a certain pride in learning

a few Japanese words which could be under-

194

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

stood by the people around him. And he
made it his business to sit down like a
Japanese and say " Sayonara " when a guest
leaves the house ; and he likes doing it.
He shouted ''Banzai'' for the first time the
day my brother brought him two paper
flags, one of them being, of course, Japanese,
while the other was an American one. " You
Japanese baby ? " Leonie asked him. '* Yes,"
he replied, turning to me. And when I
asked him how he would like to remain
an American, he would turn to my wife
and say: "Yes." He was the cause of no
small sensation among the Japanese children
of this Koishikawa district, at least ; his
foreign manner and Western tint, and also
the point of his having a Japanese father,
I should say, made him a wonderful thing
to look at for the children around here,
while they felt some kinship with him. The
fame of Isamu spread over many miles ; even
a jinrikisha man far away will tell you where

" Baby San " hves, although N 's name may

mean nothing to his ear. The children think,
I am sure, that "Baby" is his own name;
and whenever they pass by our house, morn-
ing or evening, they will shout loudly : " Baby
San." And Isamu will rarely miss a chance

to run out and show himself in answer. The

195

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

little fellow is quite vain already. And the
children who caught the word of "Mama"
spoken by Isamu to his mother, thought
that it was Leonie's name. I am told by
her that she was frequently startled by a
shout of " Mama San " from behind in the
street. To be the mother of " Baby San "
is not at all bad. I felt happy to see that
he began to play with the Japanese children.
We have a little play called " Mekakushi " ;
many children will make a large ring with
joined hands, and choose a child and let
him stand in the middle of the rings with
his eyes covered with his palms. Mekakushi
means '*eyes hidden." The child at the
centre will walk to the ring, and touch any
child, and tell its right name ; and then
the child who was told its own name will
take its turn to be in the middle. It
happened one evening that our Isamu was
obliged to stand in the centre ; his bewilder-
ment was clear, for he never knew the
children's real names. But accidentally,
Leonie passed by on her way home ; he
took advantage of the chance at once, and
called out loudly : *' Mama, mama ! " I am
not told whether my wife fulfilled her duty
to stand in the middle or not, however; we
talked about it afterwards, and laughed.

196

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

Our large, oval, wooden Japanese bath-tub
furnishes him with one of the most pleasing
of objects. He will get in it even when
the water is hardly warm ; he does not mind
cold water a bit. If I happen to see him
in there, he will proudly let me admire his
stomach, which is, in fact, big for such a
little child ; it is his proudest exhibit. He
calls it " Baby's Bread-basket " ; I cannot
help smiling when I think that it was wisely
named. We have a little folklore story of
a monkey and a tortoise ; the latter w^as out-
witted by the former when he attempted to

get the monkey's liver. Mrs. N told him

of this story, changing the liver to stomach ;
the variation was effective, and took his little
heart by storm. A day or two later, when
a monkey player dropped into our house,
and made the monkey dance, he kept watch-
ing its stomach ; and when it was gone, he
was tremendously sorry that he could not
get near enough to see it.

Isamu hates anything which does not move,

or makes no noise. When he has nothing

new to play with, he will begin to open and

shut the shojis ; when he tires of that, he

will try to go around the house and hunt

after the clocks which I hid, as they lost the

right track of the time since he came. And

197

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

presently I send him away with a servant to
the Botanical Garden to look at and feed the
*' kwakwa," as he calls the ducks.

He made a habit of playing with our
shadows on the walls of the sitting-room after
supper every evening. " Mama, shadow
gone I Give Baby shadow, mama," he will
exclaim, sulkily seeing his own shadow dis-
appear. *' Go to papa ! He will give it to
you," Leonie will say ; then he will hunt for
it, pushing his hand everywhere about my
dress. *' There it is, Baby," I will say, seeing
his shadow accidentally appear on the wall.
How delighted he is ! He is not pleased to
go to bed if he does not see the moon. But
I doubt if he has any real knowledge of
the moon. When I say that he must go to
bed, he will go outside the door, and say
there is no moon yet. Then I quietly steal
into the drawing-room and light a large
hanging lamp with a blue- coloured globe, and
say to him: **Moon is come now. See it,
Baby I " He will be mighty pleased with it ;
a few minutes later, he will be in bed, soundly
sleeping. Really, his sleeping face looks like
a miniature Buddha idol, as Leonie wrote me
long ago.

Any child appears wonderful to his father ;

so is Isamu to me. I confess that I made

198

ISAMU'S ARRIVAL IN JAPAN

many new discoveries of life and beauty
since the day of his arrival in Japan. I
never pass by a store in the street without
looking at the things which might belong
to children.

199

IX

THE STORY OF MY OWN UNCLE

I AWOKE to the song of the nightingale.
(Such a beginning may sound, I am afraid,
prosaic in these days of disillusion.) Negishi
of my recent residence, however, is one of
the few places in Tokyo still with old
reminiscences clinging gossamer-like, where
the nightingale always associated with ancient
art does not look out of place. My attention,
which had become my morning habit while
stretching forth my body in bed, was inter-
rupted at once most harshly by the bells of
a newsboy; I knew that the Tokyo Asahi
was already in my mail-box. When I called
the housegirl for the paper, the nightingale,
certainly indignant at the discord of modern
life, gracefully slipped away. The shaft of
the sun pierced through the pane into my
room.

I opened the paper mechanically, with-
out any desire for news, my body still

attached to the pillow; my eyes were

200

THE STORY OF MY OWN UNCLE

suddenly drawn to the picture of an old
woman, no one but the mother of Denjiro
Kotoku, the so-called anarchist, who had
been condemned to the gallows; it was
an announcement of her death. I am told
that she stood, a week or ten days ago,
before her son's cell, to say her farewell
after making a long, tiresome journey to
Tokyo from far-away Tosa, this old lady of
seventy years, and advised Kotoku : " Make
your last moment manlike ! You must never
act like a coward." She died as it seems
almost immediately after her return home ;
she died on the 28th of December.

The paper printed Kotoku's letter written
to his friend Kosen Sakai soon after her
call on him in the cell ; in part he writes :

"I should have felt more easy if she had
cried on seeing me here. I was awe-struck
with the shrill of her old soul heightening
to silence. Dear mother was trembling.
Silence was a far greater reproach than
tears. It is said that the mother always
loves the more stupid child, and I know
how much she loves me. Oh, how I love
her!"

The news was broken to him in court

by the lawyer Isobe ; his face turned pale,

the paper says, for a while, with no word.

201

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

Then he said in a slow voice : *' That is
better."

I was instantly moved to tears when T
read it, although my senses were some-
what hardened lately ; how glad 1 was, a
moment later, to hear Kotoku's heart-cry,
sad of course but true ! I often ask myself
how much of Japanese life is reality ; it may
not be altogether Orientalism to say that
there is nothing real except the fact of
love between mother and son. I would
venture to say that Kotoku too might be
only a little bundle of flesh with an adven-
turous turn of mind like a thousand others
hastening from shadow to shadow, if he
had not impressed my mind memorably with
that reality of his true heart as he did by
accident.

Besides, I had another story in my mind,
over which I often cried since my boyhood
days, when 1 took the news of Kotoku's
mother so closely to my heart; it is about
my uncle who died some thirty years ago,
being then younger than I am to-day. He
was a Buddhist priest and poet, Daishun
Ukai by name.

I most gladly go back to the story of my

own uncle of heroic temperament natural

202

THE STOEY OF MY OWN UNCLE

for a priest of his own age, as if I were an
animal who chews back what he ate before,
when I feel myself a victim of platitude;
the blood on my mother's side, thank heaven,
must have been quite ambitious. The talk
about him (oh, how I wish I had seen
him even once ! ) I had, a month ago, with
the Rev. Hojun Takeda, my uncle's younger
brother in faith, now the Father of Komyoji
at Kamakura, has still over my thought the
same effect as of a red afterglow of a hot
summer day beneath which the world assumes
a romantic aspect. As the incense arose, the
breezes passed away. The Rev. Takeda
proceeded :

" I was alone in the temple, that is Jennoji
of Ishiki Village, but expecting the Father to
be back as he had only gone to the next
village. It was almost evening when the
village ' dog ' (the name given for a detective
in those days) called at the temple; he
begged permission to let his gentlemen guests
from Nagoya rest for while in some room. I
consented to it as he was known to me
already; the men, two in number, who
followed after Shota — that was the name of
the village 'dog' — had no peculiarity either
in look or speech to incite my suspicion. As
usual, I offered them cups of tea and cakes.

THE STOEY OF YONE NOGUCHI

' 'Tis the most delicious tea,' one of them said.
' Was it brought from Y^edo ? ' The pronun-
ciation of Tokyo for the new capital was not
ready on our lips yet in those days. I said to
him : * My brother priest brought it home
from there a week ago.' ' Mr. Daishun Ukai
has returned, I presume,' the other exclaimed.
' Where is he to-day ? We have had, we con-
fess, much desire to be acquainted with him ;
his fame as a poet and Chinese calligrapher is
widely known in town.' My innocent head,
already twenty-one years old then, did not,
however, suspect the real nature of those
people ; and how could I know what secrecy
of plot or treason Daishun's bosom had
sheltered. It seems that he tried to make his
silence cover up the reason of his sudden
return after a journey of three hundred miles
on horseback; I thought his face was not
clear, and he acted strangely restless as if his
mind were all stuffed with a matter that could
not be revealed before the people prominent
socially as well as politically, to whom Daishun
always accompanied me. I think now that he
soon gave up his hope of raising soldiers from
his native province for his plot, with Tatsuwo
Kumoi as a leader, that most wonderful
rebellious soul, to overthrow the Government

newly formed after the completion of the so-

204

THE STORY OF MY OWN UNCLE

called Grand Restoration; and in fact, he

had left the temple two days before. Even

while I was talking with those visitors, he

must have been at your native home in

Tsushima. I told them that he had started to

Is^ Province, and would likely stay at Kounji

Temple of Yokkaichi. They begged me to let

them look round the temple and garden ; after

making such an inappropriate apology, they

examined every corner of the temple, I might

say, even the ashes under the kitchen pot.

" The Father, the Rev. Setsuwo Ukai, your

grand -uncle as you know, of course uncle to

Daishun, reached home after those suspicious

visitors had left the temple. I was telling

him about them at length; Shota hurried

back again, half an hour later, to assure us

that Daishun had surely gone to Yokkaichi,

and to reveal the affair in general, most grave

as we soon found it was. Shota almost

frightened the Father by saying that Kumoi

and nearly all of his followers had been

already arrested at Yedo, and there was no

possible way for Daishun to escape his fate.

* My nephew,' said the Father, ' of whose

manly behaviour I have often been proud,

would not run and hide himself; you have

only to go to Kounji Temple with the city

detectives, and meet him, and explain to him

205

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

about the situation he must accept, and
patiently await his surrender. You must
remember that he was this Ukai's nephew.
Deal with him as a man but not as a common
criminal ! Don't forget he was my proud
nephew!' I believe that Shota and his
fellow-detectives started toward Ise Province
immediately that evening."

My uncle stopped over night at my home,
that is Tsushima, before he turned his face
toward Yokkaichi ; it is said that my mother,
who expected him to appear as a holy priest
in black robe, with a golden scarf over his
shoulder, was perfectly taken aback on seeing
him as a man who had returned to secular
life, with hair grown long, unlike a priest,
wearing a coat with the dragon crest, that
was doubtless Tatsuwo Kumoi's. Kumoi's
name was already known to my mother, as it
was my uncle who had suggested to her that
she might marry Kumoi, who promised him,
it is said, to welcome her even without seeing
her, and said that the fact of her being a
younger sister to him was enough recom-
mendation; but she married my father in-
stead, who passes to-day as an honest man of
the town, now in his seventieth year. My
mother was wondering what devil had taken
hold of uncle, my mother of deeply religious

206

THE STORY OF MY OWN UNCLE

faith ; and now seeing him wear Kumoi's
coat, it was quite natural for her to guess
how related he stood with him. My uncle,
extremely ambitious in his boy's days, was
only glad to walk three hundred miles to
Yedo for study, as it was the day of no rail-
road ; and when he came of age he was ap-
pointed superintendent of the Mitsuun Ryo
(a sort of dormitory for priests) belonging to
great Zojoji Temple. It is beyond the
imagination of the present Japanese what a
mighty power that particular temple had; a
hundred small temples waited on Zojoji like
vassals ; the bells were rung and the candles
burned day and night; a thousand priests
swarmed at Shiba. There were many ryos or
halls, one of which was uncle's Mitsuun Ryo,
the Dense Cloud Hall ; it was said that those
halls, like many others, had hidden money
which was used to accommodate the im-
poverished lords and samurais who were
obliged to keep a decent front proper for
their standing. And Mitsuun Ryo was one
of the richest. I do not know clearly how
my uncle became acquainted with Kumoi
from Yonezawa ; it may have happened that
he sought a temporary shelter in uncle's ryo
as those priest-halls were a suitable rendezvous
for the souls discontented and romantic, mostly

207

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

sympathetic with the Tokugawa family, look-
ing for chances to overthrow the government
the southern people had formed, themselves
men who, like Kumoi, hailed from the North ;
and the priests like my uncle, independent and
learned, must have been their splendid com-
panions. It seems that my uncle's poetical
turn of mind found immediately the most
congenial spirit in Kumoi, whose fame as a
poet with Byronic fire is still sung among the
students of to-day. Kumoi wrote one of the
very famous ballads for my uncle when he
bade him farewell before he started for home :
how my young blood used to boil in singing
that song, as in the song my uncle must
have been quite audacious and strong in tem-
perament. Besides there was, I believe, some
monetary relation between them, as I see not
a few letters written by Kumoi begging my
uncle for a loan ; it should be understood that
the gold he had would very likely belong to
the hall he superintended. One of the most
interesting letters that remain in my hand
tells that he was afraid to bring guns and
cartridges into the hall in the daytime lest it
should inspire general suspicion ; I am sure
that my uncle had a considerable hand in the
now so-called Kumoi revolt. He was only in

his twenty-seventh year.

208

THE STORY OF MY OWN UNCLE

The scene changes now from Tsushima
to Yokkaichi. He was surprised, when he
was leaving Kounji Temple at evening for a
walk, to be addressed by Shota from behind,
who said that his two friends from Nagoya
were waiting at a certain tea-house to make
uncle's acquaintance ; and he followed Shota
as he led him. The fellows who were said
to be from Nagoya — of course the same men
who had called on Zennoji Temple twenty-
four hours before — were drinking sake. With-
out any formal salutation, both of them
raised their cups on seeing uncle enter the
room, and entreated him to drink, as if he
were a friend of thirty years' standing. He
had a good taste in wine himself; without
pressing to ask them a question about the
nature of their invitation, he accepted their
offer, and began to drink in a sort of abandon.
Did he suspect them? Of course he did.
He felt on the spot, when he saw them, that
his fate was already sealed. The night grew
late ; he rose suddenly, and was on the point
of leaving them, when they, those detectives
from Nagoya, threw over him a long rope
that they had hidden most wonderfully under
their sleeves. The Rev. Daishun Ukai, my
great uncle, looked back and laughed, and
said : " I thought you were gentlemen." The

209 o

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

detectives, I am told, apologised humbly for
their shabby conduct. My uncle begged a
grace of half an hour to fix his belongings
that he had left at the temple; and as he
had promised, he surrendered himself to them
gently when the time was up. And he was
sent under guard to the prison at Nagoya
at once.

Daishun's mother, my dear grandmother,
whose sweet memory has yet to be told,
was terribly dejected when the news of her
son's temporary imprisonment at Nagoya, and
the general rumour that she must now pre-
pare for his death, reached her ; but when she
gained slowly a strength from her conviction
that he had done no cowardly crime, although
it might not be admirable in all ways round,
and that at least it was manly and romantic,
her motherly love of a countrywoman, simple
and straight, only feared if he might not be
hungry in the cell. The day of Daishun's
departure for Yedo was announced ; my
grandmother rose before dawn and filled a
large basket with persimmons from the garden,
and with the chestnuts she had cooked the
night before, and some sort of cake which
she thought he would like (it was made,
indeed, with her tears). She walked eighteen
miles toward Nagoya, and waited for her

210

THE STORY OF MY OWN UNCLE

son's tomaru kago or palanquin to pass,
under the pine forest by the country road
a little off Nagoya, at the place generally
known as Kasa Dera, as there the Kwannon
goddess wearing a bamboo hat stands. The
autumnal sun began to sink; her senses,
like the trees and grasses turned gold in the
falling light, were perfectly numbed in anxiety
and tears. I can well believe that she was
almost blind when the palanquin approached
like a ghost looming out of mist ; her eyesight
at once returned with the greatest pain when
she saw right before herself, within a palan-
quin, her very son joining his hands in appeal
of pardon, with his face toward his mother.
She stumbled forward, bursting into tears,
and practically checked the procession. The
guards with two swords, more that fifteen,
examined her, but her expression of mother s
love inspired sympathy in their cold hearts.
It is said that even a kind word was spoken
to her by them ; and her basket was promised
to be given to the prisoner. She did not
know how she returned home ; and she cried
and cried over the white palanquin, which
was the acknowledged sign of death in those
days. But, in fact, it was blue.

He escaped capital punishment from the

reason of his being a priest, as a special

211

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

mitigation was given to the priestfolk; his
reUgious work was worthy of note after his
serving a long imprisonment. It is said when
he died suddenly in his thirty-third year,
that his writing of three hundred pieces of
Chinese four-line poems in one night was
the main cause of his death. The book of
his poems will be published presently; the
selection of phrases to be carved on the
monument which is soon going to be put
up has been entrusted to my hand.

I do not know exactly what was the true
motive of his treason; the acknowledged
history of the earliest Meiji period only
contains two or three lines in vague indiffer-
ence. And the fact that I did not know
him with my living eye, as he died when
I was merely four or five years old, only
helps to make him shadowy and unreal.
But whenever I think of his joining his
hands toward his mother in appeal of pardon
from his palanquin, he becomes most strik-
ingly a man of reality, all tender and human.

Oh, where is the thing more real than the
love between mother and son ? " Here lies
the son who loved at least his own mother"
is the line that might be carved on his
tomb.

212

X

THE LANTERN CARNIVAL

The evening that flowed out from the forests
of Tado Mountain already besieged the valley,
in whose shade Tsushima, a town of a few
thousand people, laid her soul and body to
rest and prayer, when my train dropped me
there quite informally some ten years ago.
My mind was all uneasy with my rising joy,
as it was my first return home after more
than ten years of Western life. At the
station I frightened my old father ; he looked
so happy when he made sure that I was his
son, real and true — not the foreigner whom
he took me for at first. " We must go
straight," he said, in a tone that I could
not oppose, "to the shrine, and report to
the god your safe return. How glad am I
that my prayer has been thus answered ! "
Although I wished in my heart of hearts
to see my aged mother first, I could not
but obey him, and followed toward the sacred

ground. He told me on the way how he

213

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

lighted a sacred lantern every night for my
welfare, and that he had never missed even
one day, during those long years of my
absence, to pay the god a visit of devotion.
It seemed he thought that all my health,
all my success, whatever it were, should
be attributed to the divine help of the god
— I had no quarrel with him about it, of
course — and by the god he meant Gozu
Tenno, of Tsushima, classically speaking, the
Town of Purple Waves. I felt awe-struck,
even ashamed, to think that I had neglected
to look back to the town god with thanks
during many, many years when I stepped
into the grounds where the sad loneliness
moved like mists, and the holy watch-fire
woke the darkness now and then to flight,
and the burning lanterns swung as if they
were stray ghosts. My old sense of rever-
ence towards this particular god, whom I
was taught to revere since my earliest child-
hood— for I was born here at Tsushima —
suddenly returned, and I thought that again
the rise and fall of my own life was in his
grasp. And how thankful I was for his
mercy and divine will !

When I reached home my father lighted
those little stone lanterns of the garden

dedicated to the god, that is, Gozu Tenno,

214

THE LANTERN CARNIVAL

or the Ox-Head Emperor, " Susanowo no
Mikoto " in the Japanese mythology, younger
brother to Amaterasu Omikami, Goddess
of the Sun. The yellow flame flickered,
throwing an uncertain shadow in the room
where I slept. Before I wholly fell asleep
my mind was moved to compare the cities
of the West, where I had spent an ephemeral
life, as a bird does from branch to branch,
to this Tsushima, the town loved by the
god, where the people lead a life of simplicity,
which is almost religious austerity. My soul,
stricken by the winds and dusty turmoil of
the Western life, seemed at once to be healed
by the mystery and peace of the town which,
in spring, is seen reposing upon a yellow mat
of rape flowers, and in summer, is magic with
the beauty of lotus. Who does not love his
old home? Although I was called soon
again to leave the town after this short visit,
it became my habit to return home at least
once in two years and renew my old asso-
ciation with the Saya River, winding like a
silver-sheened snake through the sands, with
the pine trees lining the dyke called Saruwo,
projecting into the Tennogawa Pond, where
the annual Lantern Carnival is held on
July 15, of course under the august com-
mand of Gozu Tenno.

215

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

It is, in truth, one of the wonderful sights
of the world, this Lantern Carnival, when
six festival cars, each capped by a semicircle
of a thousand brilliantly lighted lanterns, make
an all-night revel ; the thought of them takes
me back ofF-hand to the merriment of my
boyhood days. The town would hardly find
subsistence if she were not connected with
this famous god, known all over the eight
provinces of Middle Japan, for she really
exists by the pilgrims, although she serves,
on the other hand, as a market-place for the
people from ten miles round. Indeed, there
is no month when the town people do not
feel grateful to the god ; but when you know
that the Lantern Carnival draws more than
fifty thousand people with no advertisement
whatever, it will be understood that at least
half the town makes the greater part of the
year's earning in those few days of the festival.
It is worth seeing, and not less worth telling
to others.

I used to play a flute, with the other
children, for our car, which belonged to our
street — that is, Nakajima Cho. The six cars
are all decorated differently for the day Carni-
val on July 16, with wax figures from the
"No" drama — like Takasago, or the "Old
Man and Woman, the Pine Tree Spirits,''

S16

THE LANTERN CARNIVAL

Katanakaji, or the " Holy Swordsmith," and
others — on top, under a wooden frame, with
a special roof, the bodies of the cars being
covered by gorgeous draperies. It was our
work, now twenty or more years ago, to make
the plum-blossoms with thin red and white
paper for the decoration of the car. How
glad we were to engage in the work, ever fired
with the ambition to compete with the
children of other streets in our skill. And
also the work of lighting the candles was
entrusted to our hands. The children, as in
any other Japanese festival, are the masters
of the occasion ; they are doubtless the friends
of the god. To revive my old association
with Gozu Tenno, the patron god of our
town, which had become estranged, and, above
all, to use the opportunity of returning to my
boyhood days, at least in spirit, I decided to
leave Tokyo and turn my head homeward on
the early morning of July 15 of this year.
The sky was clear, as if perfectly wiped ; the
day was hot. I was happy in my anticipa-
tion of the riot of merriment and the beauty
of lanterns of the night.

I was told by my mother, when I reached
home, that Haru Chan, our neighbour's sweet
little son of four years old, had been elected
a Chigo, or "divine child," to become the

217

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

commander of the car for our Nakajima Cho
Street. Is not the idea of selecting a child
for such an honour beautiful ? Let me say,
again, that, as this is the god's festival, the
children are first in his sacred thought. It is
quite a distinction to the child, of course, and
also to the family; they treat him with a
great reverence, proper to a divine child, as he
has ceased to be their own son and has become
the god ever since he was appointed to become
the Chigo for the festival. A special eating-
table, new chopsticks, and new rice bowls will
be given him ; perhaps a new dress also. It
is not out of keeping that they imagine they
see the god's presence in their boy's tumbling
body. I had no chance to become a Chigo
myself, but my eldest brother had. When I
was a boy the family storeroom was my haunt
of joy, where I used to bring out a little black-
lacquered chair and a tiny golden sword,
which might be taken for something an angel
had lost ; but, in fact, were the chair and
sword my brother wore as the Chigo on that
night half a century ago. I was so amused to
sit on that chair with much studied dignity,
holding that ridiculous sword and imagin-
ing the feeling which my brother must have
had as the true Chigo. Oh, Haru Chan, if he

can remember the feeling of to-night when

218

THE LANTERN CARNIVAL

he grows old ! His innocent little face was
powdered ; his dress was made of brocade of
red and green ; he looked quite dignified when
he was announced to start leading the pro-
cession towards the festival car upon the
water. You would never believe, when you
see the people in ancient court costume as the
servants of honour, that some of them are,
in naked reality, mere carpenters, blacksmiths,
or itinerant jacks-of-all- trades ; but, if a child
may become a god, I do not see why working-
men cannot turn to courtiers.

When I approached the Carnival place, that
is, the Tennogawa Pond, the roads were com-
pletely blocked by the people in merriment
and gaiety — in the well-acknowledged mood
we call bureiko, "of no etiquette." I managed,
after much difficulty, to reach our wooden
stand, temporarily built on the bank for the
family use, when the tops of those six lighted
cars were seen through the forest of the said
Saruwo, the other side of the pond being their
starting-point. By the way, the bank of the
pond is one mile long, and not even an inch of
space was left by the stands and crowds of
spectators, who were prepared to stay awake
all night or to sleep in their places. Gozu
Tenno, the famous Ox-Head Emperor, makes

his august presence this night at the head of

219

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the pond, and dominates the festival, of course,
with the voice of silence, which we well under-
stand, as we are the people of Tsushima.

Oh, why do the myriad stars fall like rain
when there is no wind to blow? They are
the fireworks that have burst in the sky. Oh,
what thunders are those we hear on the earth
when the sky is clear? They are shouts of
joy and revelry of the people gathered here.
When the cars left the Saruwo, our ears were
deafened by the flutes and drums. Oh, where
is the sad spirit of night to-night ? I am lost
to find where is the darkness when the lights
of a million lanterns blaze in the sky and turn
the waters red. Where in another country
can such a night Carnival be found ? Even in
Japan, only Tsushima, the town of the god,
has this distinction; and that town is my
native town.

I do not know when the festival cars
finished their course on the water under the
favour of the god, as I left my stand before it
had become very late in the night ; and when
I appeared again next morning at the stand,
I found that those six cars, dressed entirely
anew for the day festival, were beginning their
slow march as on the night before, but under
the sunlight, among the spectators of leaping
hearts.

THE LANTERN CARNIVAL

What does all this mean ? Although I do
not know exactly what it means, I know this :
" One is happy with the god in his heart ; and
a town will be prosperous and full of joy
where the god dwells. Such is this Tsushima,
the town protected by Gozu Tenno, the Ox-
Head Emperor, my own dear native home."

^n

XI

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

The room where I am writing — (a while ago
the temple bell rang, " trembling in its thou-
sand ages ") — is twenty-four mats large, with
a high ceiling, unusual to a common Japanese
house. It is in a temple ; the room is softened
into a mellow silence, through which the
lonely aspirant can enter into the real heart
of Buddhism. The temple, by the way, is
Zoroku An, or Tortoise Temple. That is
quite a good name for a temple, since a
tortoise, it is said, is a symbol of the six
virtues of modesty or shyness. On the
tokonoma of the room I see hanging a large
scroll with the picture of Dharuma, the
ancient Hindoo monk who established the
Zen, this religion of silence. He is repre-
sented, as usual, in meditation, his large eyes
opened, extremely solemn ; it is said that he

sat still against a wall for nine long years

222

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

before he arose with his religion. I once
wrote upon this picture of Dharuma:

" Oh, magic of meditation, witchery of silence, —
Language for which secret has no power !
Oh, vastness of the soul of night and death.
Where time and pains cease to exist ! "

The room seems almost holy when I think
that I can sit before the inextinguishable lamp
of Faith, and seek the road of emancipation
and poetry ; it is here where, indeed, criticism
vainly attempts to enter for arguing and
denying. And I once wrote :

" The silence is whole and perfect, and
makes your wizard life powerless; your true
friendship with the ghosts and the beautiful
will soon be established. You have to aban-
don yourself to the beautiful only to create
the absolute beauty and grandeur that makes
this our human world look trifling, hardly
worth troubling about ; it is the magical house
of Faith where the real echo of the oldest song
still vibrates with the newest wonder, and
even a simple little thought, once under the
touch of imagination, grows more splendrous
than art, more beautiful than life."

To get the real silence, means to make

imagination swell to its full swing. Through

2^

THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

imagination I wish to go back to the age of
emotion and true love, when the reahty of
the external world ceases to be a standard,
and you yourself will be a revelation, there-
fore a great art itself, of hope and passion
which will never fail. You might look
through the open doors of my room in this
Tortoise Temple ; you then would see facing
you a great forest of Japanese cedars, by
whose shadows the Zen monks young or old
will now and then be seen as spirits moving
on the road of mystery. On the monk I once
wrote :

" He is a pseudonym of the universal consciousness,
A person lonesome from concentration.
He is possessed of Nature's instinct,
And burns white as a flame ;
For him mortality and accident of life
No longer exist.
But only the silence and the soul of prayer."

With this entering into the Temple of
Silence, I dare say, my third spiritual awaken-
ing was well begun. You might ask now,
what was, then, my first awakening. It was
when I left San Francisco, a year after my
arrival in California, in my nineteenth year,
and went to the home of Joaquin Miller, an
eccentric American bard. There I stayed
some three years. Seen and Unseen : Mono^

9St^

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

logue of a Homeless Snail came from my first
retreat into dream and poetry, the world of
silence where is no breath or speech, but the
aloneness that is the soul of Nature. I awoke
spiritually for a second time in London some
eight or nine years later, when I found that
poetry and art were the great force of life. I
think I was not so sure of making poetry my
life's work till I published From the Eastern
Sea, because New York greatly stole away
my precious literary dream of younger days.
Now I am glad that I awoke for a third time
from sleep with a book of poems entitled The
Pilgrimage at the Temple where, as I once
wrote :

" Across the song of night and moon,
(Oh perfume of perfumes !)
My soul, as a wind
Whose heart's too full to sing,
Only roams astray. . . ."

Let me recollect how I spent my first
night there; that is now almost three years
ago.

In the desolation of the Temple of Silence,
Enkakuji of famous Kamakura, that Com-
pletely Awakened Temple, under the bless-
ing of dusk ; it is at evening that the temple

225 p

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

tragically soars into the magnificence of
loneliness under a chill air stirred up from
mountain and glade by the roll of the evening
bell. I had journeyed from Tokyo, that hive
of noise, here to read a page or two of the
whole language of silence, which, far from
mocking you with all sorts of interrogation
marks, soothes you with the song of prayer.
In truth, I came here to confess how little
is our human intellect. I slowly climbed the
steps, and passed by many a tatchu temple
like Shorei An, Zoroku An, and others,
which serve as vassals to great Enkakuji,
and finally reached the priest-hall to learn,
to my no small delight, that the opening
ceremony of Dai Setshin, or '* Great Meeting
with Spirit," was going to be held that very
night.

For the priests of this Zen sect, to which
Enkakuji belongs, the year is divided into
four parts, each called sl ge, which is three
months. And the two ges running from
August 15 to October 15, and from Feb-
ruary 15 to May 15, called Gekan or Seikaii,
meaning " Excused from Rule," are the
months of freedom for the dai-shu, as we
call the priests, while they have strictly to
observe every ascetic rule during the other
two ges. We call the latter " Within the

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

Rule," or Seichu, And the most important
time during the Seichics is the week of Dai
Setshin, which falls three times during the
period from May 15 to August 15. Now,
as this was the 14th of May, I was to have
an opportunity of being present at the
opening ceremony of the *' Great Meeting
with Spirit," which I had wished to attend
for some long time.

The hall was not yet lighted, as it was
a little before seven o'clock (that is the time
of "candles lighted"), when I quietly crept
into it like a wandering breeze seeking the
soul of Nirvana. And I was at once con-
ducted by a young priest into the Assembly
Chamber. I say he was a young man, but
who knows whether he were not an old
priest ?

It seemed to me that I was already led
into a magic atmosphere, in whose world-old
incense — what a song of exclamation ! — I
lost all sense of time and place. Here the
silence-wrapped monks seemed to my eyes
as if they had returned long since to those
grey elements of nature which stand above
Life and Death. And it is the very problem
of Life and Death you have to solve with
the Zen philosophy, if you like to call it
philosophy.

227

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

The chamber, although it was quite dark
already, could be seen to be wider than fifty
mats ; and here and there I observed that
the kojis or laymen were taking their ap-
pointed places, doubtless communing in their
souls with that Silence which does not awe
you, but to which you have to submit your-
self without challenge, with a prayer. Silence
is not here a weapon as it might be in some
other place ; it is a gospel whose unwritten
words can be read through the virtue of
self-forgetting.

I was gracefully entering into dream,
whicli is a path of retreat into the world of
silence, when a priest brought into the
chamber the lighted candles, announcing that
the ceremony would soon begin. Straight
before me was a candle whose yellow flame
rose in the shape of hands folded in prayer
to the Buddhist image, which I could observe
behind the lattice door of the holy dais of
the chamber. What a face of profundity,
which is but mystery! And that mystery
will become at once the soul of simplicity,
which is nature. I was told that the Buddha
was nobody but the right mind, to whom
the perfect assimilation with great nature
is emancipation, and that you and I can

be the Buddha right on the spot. It is

228

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

the dignity of this Zen Buddhism to arise
from devotion, pity, love, and the Uke ; it
is not a rehgion born in your understanding,
perhaps, but the highest state of mind before
yourself was born, breaking the peace of the
world. You have to leave your human
knowledge before you may enter here. And
so did I, to the best of my ability.

The hangi or wooden block was tapped,
and the monks, fifty in all, slipped into the
chamber from another independent house
called the " Meditation House," shaven-headed,
black-robed spectres from the abyss of night.
They muttered the holy name, and then
sat down in a row by the s/iojio, A moment
later a coughing voice was heard without,
and then the sound of straw sUppers moving
on the pavement. I looked back, and saw
three bonboris (paper- shaded hand candle-
sticks) floating forward, and then the figures
of four priests. The chief priest, who lives
in a house on the other side, was coming,
led by his attendants. The silence of the
chamber was deepened when they slipped
in and took their own places.

The chief priest sat before the lattice door
of the Buddha image shrine. He was a
man of sixty, heavily built, and sleepy
looking, doubtless from his saturation in

TaS ST3':iY OF YONE NOGUCHI

silence ; he wore a robe of yellowish-brown
colour, with a large scarf of old brocade
across his shoulder.

He looked around and said '' Hai!''
We laymen with all the priests bent our
heads upon the mats, and kept them so,
while the chief priests finished the reading
of Shogaku Kokushi's words of warning:

** We have three classes of students. One
who casts away every affinity with fire, and
studies his own self, is the very best. There
is one whose practice is not so particularly
pure, but he loves to learn; he is in the
middle class. One who quenches his own
spiritual light and delights in licking the
Buddha's saliva is of the lowest. If there be
one who drinks only the beauty of books,
and lives by writing, we call him a shaven-
headed layman, and he cannot be in even
the lowest class of our students. (How
despicable is one who writes for writing's
sake !) And, of course, we cannot admit
into our Buddhist circle one who spends
his time dissolutely eating and sleeping too
fully; the ancient worthies used to call
such an one a clothes-horse and a rice-bag.
He is not a priest at all, and cannot be
allowed to enter the temple-grounds as a
student; indeed, even his temporary visit

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

cannot be permitted, and of course he cannot
beg to stay here with us. Thus I say; but
you must not regard me as one who lacks
sympathy or love. I only wish our students
to find out their wrong and correct their
faults, so as to become a seed and shoot of
Buddhism, and so grow."

Then the chief priest said :

"There is no dream which is not born
from the bosom of reality; and we have no
reality which does not sing of dream. You
may call our life a dream if you will ; there
is no harm either to think of it as a reality.
The main point is that you have to arise
from the dream and the reality of life, and,
let me say, from life itself. You must not
be fettered by life ; death is nothing but
another phase of nature, and we hear another
harmony of beauty and music in it as in
life. Let the pine tree be green, and the
roses red. We have to observe the mystery
of every existence, human or non-human ;
these do not challenge but submit to one
another, and complete the truth of the uni-
verse. To connect mystery with our Zen
Buddhism does it no justice. There is no
mystery whatever in the world ; and truth
which may appear to an unclean mind to

be a secret, is simplicity itself, which is

231

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the soul of nature and Buddha. To attain
to the state of Buddha through the virtue
of meditation whose word is silence, is our
salvation. The language of silence cannot
be understood by the way of reason, but
by the power of impulse, which is abstrac-
tion. Sakyamuni, it is said, picked a flower,
which he showed to all the priests who
gathered at Reizan Kaijo ; all of them were
silent, but Kayo Sonja smiled. That smile
is the truth of self-possession and deliver-
ance ; we long for it."

All the priests stood and read the
*' Dharani of Great Mercy," and ended
with their vows of consecration:

** We vow to save all innumerous mankind ;

We vow to cut down all the exhaustless
lusts ;

We vow to learn all the boundless laws ;

We vow to complete all the peerless under-
standing."

Then the tea was poured in our cups

and some parched rice slightly sugared was

served out on pieces of paper which we

carried. (It is the temple's rule not to

trouble another's hand.) We drank the tea

and ate the rice. Then the chief priest rose

232

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

and departed in silence, accompanied by his
three attendant priests as before. When
their steps became inaudible in the silence
of the night, and their bonboris disappeared
in the bosom of dc*:'kness, »all the priests
rose and retired to their Meditation House,
and I to the guest-room next to the
Assembly Chamber, conducted thither by
one of the fuzuis or under-secretaries of
this priest-hall, who left with me a piece of
writing. It read :

** Rising : two o'clock a.m.
Prayer : three o'clock.
Breakfast : four o'clock.
Offering to the Buddha : eight o'clock.
Prayer : nine o'clock.
Dinner '^ ten o'clock.
Morning-bell struck : eleven o'clock.
Lecture : one o'clock p.m.
Prayer : half -past two o'clock.
Supper : four o'clock.
Evening bell struck : twenty minutes past

six o'clock.
Prayer : seven o'clock.
Sleep ; eight o'clock."

The room in which I found myself had
all the desolation of the senses which scorns

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the flame of excitement — (the subduing of
excitement is the first principle here) — that
I had found in the Assembly Chamber. I
felt the silence deepening, when I perceived
1 had nobody, not even a priest silent as
a ghost, near me. Now and then the
hooting of an owl searched my ear from
the mountain at the back ; and the candle
burned lonesomely as my own solitary soul.

Some time ago I had heard the hangi
struck announcing the time to put lights
out and go to sleep. But I am sure there
is many a priest who will meditate all night
sitting up in the darkness ; the darkness
for him will be the Buddha's light to lead
him into the silence of conception.

I tried but in vain to go to sleep, then
my own soul — whatever it was — became
more awakened. I read the words written
on a kakemono hung on the tokonoma:
" Hear the voice of thy hand." It must be
one of those questions of which I have
heard, put by the chief priest to the monks,
to be answered through their own under-
standing. Here we must find our own
salvation by the power of our contempla-
tion. . . . Where is the voice of your hand
except in yourself? And, again, where is
the truth except in your own soul? To

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

understand your own self is to understand
the truth. The voice of truth is the voice
of your own hand. I raised my head to-
ward the shoji ; through its broken paper
I caught sight of a star in the profundity
of silence. " Silence is emancipation," I cried.

I could not rise at two o'clock next
morning, as I had wished ; and I felt ashamed
to be called by a priest to leave my bed and
get up for breakfast. When I made my ap-
pearance in the Assembly Chamber, which
was a dining-room in turn, all the monks were
already seated, silently and even solemnly, as
on the previous evening. They muttered a
short prayer before they brought out their
bowls and chopsticks from under their black
robes. (They are their only belongings,
beside one or two sacred books.) With them
I had the severest breakfast that ever I ate ;
it consisted only of some gruel, chiefly of
barley, with a little rice as an apology, with a
few slices of vegetables dipped in salted water.
However, I enjoyed it, as they did.

I thought their diet was far beyond sim-
plicity, while I admitted their pride of high
thinking. And I wondered if it was true
asceticism to abandon every human longing,
so as to make the way clear for spiritual exal-
tation, for flying in the air as a bird, and not

235

THE STORY OF TONE NOGUCHI

walking like any other animal. It is written,
I am told, in the holy book, of the dignity of
poverty, that it should be guarded as sacred
law. (Oh, to think of the luxuries of the
West ! ) These priests are sent out begging
far and near every month. Begging is re-
garded as divine, a gift as the expression of
sacrifice and self-immolation. They live on
charity. They do not beg for the sake of
begging, but to keep the spirit of the Buddha's
law; then there is no begging. Meikei of
Toganowo, the Buddhist teacher of Yasutoki
Hojo, the Hojo feudal prince, was asked to
accept a great piece of land of the Tanba pro-
vince for his temple expenses ; but he refused
with many thanks, saying that there was no
greater enemy than luxury for priests, who,
under its mockery, might become dissolute and
cease to observe the holy law. " Mighty
Poverty, I pray unto thy dignity to protect
Buddhism from spiritual ruin," he exclaimed.
Such is the Zen's loftiness. I remember some-
body said that he could pray better when he
was hungry. I read the following **list of
charity receipts " in the office of the fusu or
chief secretary :

" Ten yen for the great feast.
Ten yen for Prajna-reading.
236

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

Eight yen for the general feasting.

Four yen for feasting.

Three yen and a half for lunch-giving.

Three yen for gruel-giving.

Two yen and a half for rice-giving as a

side-dish.
Seventy sen for cake-giving.
Thirty^ sen for bath-giving."

No woman is privileged to enter the priest-
hall ; here the monks themselves wash, cook,
and sew. The four priests under the Tenzu
Ryo take upon themselves the cook's responsi-
bilities ; the Densu priests attend to cleaning
the dais and images. And there are the two
priests at the Jisha Ryo who serve Monju
Bosatsu, the holy image enshrined in the
Meditation House ; here they offer tea and
bowls of rice at the proper time. Those who
look after the vegetables are called Yenju;
and there are three attendant priests on the
chief priest. The chief secretary with his two
assistants manages the whole business of the
priest-hall.

This Enkakuji embraces mountainous
ground of some five hundred acres, where, in
the olden days when we had more devotion,
more than forty small temples used to stand,

but to-day only twenty of them survive the

237

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

accidental destruction of fire or natural ruin.
By the way, the priest-hall belongs to Seizoku
An, one of the tachu temples. Enkakuji was
founded by Tokimune Hojo, hero of the Hojo
feudal government, who cut off the heads of
the envoys of Kublai Khan at Tatsunokuchi,
and then destroyed the Mogul armies on the
Tsukushi seas. He was a great believer in
Zen Buddhism, and on its power he nourished
his wonderful spirit of conviction and bravery
which triumphed in Japan's first battle with
the foreign invasion some six hundred years
ago. And it was the Chinese priest called
Sogen Zenji whom he invited here to this
Enkakuji, and to whom he made his student's
obeisance. Indeed, here where I walk in the
silence under the twittering of birds from the
temple-eaves, through the sentinel- straight
cedar trees, is the very place. Here he
exchanged confidence and faith with moun-
tains and stars. He must have sat, too, in the
Meditation House, just as those fifty priests
whom we see sitting there to-day. In truth,
zazen, or sitting in abstraction, is the way to
concentrate and intensify your mind so that it
will never be alarmed, even amid the crash of
thunder or at the sight of mountains faUing
before your eyes.

You have to bend your right leg and set

238

BUDDHIST MEDITATION

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

it in the crotch of your left, which, too, must
be put on your right. Then the back of your
right hand must be placed on the left leg, and
the back of your left hand within your right
palm; and both of your thumbs must be
raised to form a circle. You must not look
up nor down ; your ears and shoulders must
be straight in line, and also your nose and
navel. Open your eyes as usual, and breathe
in and out slowly. Above all, you must find
the place of imaginary existence of your soul
right in your left palm. Then will your mind
grow into silence, as Buddha on the lotus-
flower — how pure the silence of that flower —
floating on the peaceful bosom of the universe,
pure from all the sense of life and death, you
and nature being perfectly at one. Silence is
the power of nature ; it is the true state in
which to perfect one's existence. It is non-
action— which does not mean inactivity ; it is
the full urge of active actionlessness. It is the
very completion of one's health and spirit.

Our forefathers thought it a matter of great
pride to die right before their master's horse
in battle; they thought, as one saying goes,
that to die was to return home. Life for
them was a temporary exile which should not
be taken too seriously. They respected fru-
gality as a virtue ; they did not think that

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

speech was a proper defence, and entrenched
themselves in the language of silence. The
temple of silence, such as Enkakuji and others,
was for them an indispensable shrine of spiri-
tual education. Here at Kamakura they
found their proper sanctuaries.

Enkakuji was burned down three or four
times by the warriors' fire, all of it except one
little temple, called Shari Den, beside the
Meditation House, where some particles of
Buddha's bones, some part of his jawbone, it
is said, are enshrined. I could well believe
that even the hearts of boorish warriors were
melted by the warmth of Buddha's glory.
Shari Den is a small affair of thirty-six feet
square, crowned with a thatched roof. As
perfect harmony with nature, not only spiritu-
ally but also physically, is the keynote of
Zen Buddhism, the aged soft, dark-brown
colour of thatch was preferred — the colour of
submission and contentment. This small
Shari Den is now under the government's
protection as a model structure of the Zen
sect temples of the Kamakura period which
followed the So style of China. The second
gate of the temple enclosure, that mass of
structure of two stories, carrying all the
weariness and silence of ages in its colouring,

is a giant of surprise which, however, does not

240

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

amaze you unduly; but the magnificent as-
pect of its massive dignity will make you
really wonder whether there may not be a
certain power of spirit shining through its
ashen surface, by which it still makes mani-
fest its immensity of grandeur. Not only the
gate, but many other things about the grounds
seem soaring beyond the grasp of ruin ; I dare
say they will continue to exist indefinitely by
the power of prayer and silence. Indeed, this
is the ground of mystery, however the Zen
may deny it. You will learn, I am sure,
that carvings, gargoyles, dragons and the
like, are not everything even for a Japanese
temple. And what a grandeur of simplicity !
Let us learn here the grey simplicity of
truth !

A somewhat squat building of a similar
character of structure to that of the gate-
tower, some fifteen ken square (one ken is six
feet), will receive you after the gate, if you
wish to offer your prayer. Prayer is the
" Great Clear Shining Treasure " of your mind,
as the tablet carved from the autograph of the
Emperor Gokogen, which you see above the
doors, has it. The floor is paved with the
lichen-green squares of tiles which add their

tragic emphasis to the already twilight soul of

241 Q

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

the edifice. Strangely gesticulating incense is
seen rising from the altar toward Sakyamuni,
colossal, gold-robed, and with a gold crown,
who is companioned by two lonely figures of
guardian Bosatsus. This is the place where,
by virtue of your prayer, you can forget your
human speech, and rise on high into the
light of silence. If only one could stay
here till the blessed day of the Miroku — the
expected Messiah, whom the Buddha pro-
mised to give us after the lapse of five thou-
sand years I

I walked slowly in the temple grounds,
and again and again thought over what I
had read of Zen Buddism. And I re-
peated :

" The law of the world and man, for sage
as well as for common folk, should not be
forced to be understood; let it be as it is.

ilt is neither difficult nor easy. To take it
as it is, in truth, is the real understanding.
Drink tea when you are thirsty, eat food

,in your hunger. Rise with dawn, and sleep

jwhen the sun sets. But your trouble will
begin when you let desire act freely; you
have to soar above all personal desire. You
may be far away from the real law when

j you first determine to reach the perfect

A JAPANESE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

understanding; but not to be perplexed
with your doubt is the right road, whereby
to enter into the true perception. We have
no reahty, neither goodness nor badness;
we create them only by our own will.
Separate yourself from love and hatred, or
be not fettered with love and hatred; then
the real law shall reveal itself clearly. The
law is one only, but it expresses itself in a
thousand different forms. Here are mountain,
river, flower, grass; the moon, sun, are not
the same things. But the law which makes
them to appear for their existence is the
same law. To one who understands the
law's true meaning, they are the same thing,
or the same thing under different forms.
The law is eternal; its power covers the
whole world. And yet if you are blinded \
with your own self, you cannot see it at all. ;
We call it disease of soul to have love
fighting with hatred, goodness with badness ;
and if you do not understand the real state
of the law, your silence will be foohshly
disturbed. To gain the perfect silence, this \
is victory ; it makes you soar high above ^
your self and doubt. Silence is the ex-
pression of the real law of the world and

man. By its virtue you can join perfectly

243 '

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

i with great Nature. Then are you Eternity
/ itself, and you are Buddha."

To make the separate self to cease from

its selfishness is the keynote of the Zen.

After all, it is nothing but the religion of

universal love and humanity.

244

XII
EPILOGUE

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD

I HAVE written quite many of my own
stories ; but still many more are left un-
written. I have been thinking for some
long while that I shall go minutely in
recording my own memories of my child-
hood days ; and I must say something about
my dear father, who died the most ideal
death in his seventieth year last July (1913),
surrounded by his five children and others.
The readers will find somewhere in this
book the name of Isamu, a boy from my first
marriage; but I said nothing about Hifumi,
Haruwo, and Masawo, these three children
whom the present wife of mine, a Japanese,
brought to me. I am sure that the stories
about them will furnish me another book.

Here is one man, now dead, by the name
of Charles Warren Stoddard, whose memory

I cherish in my inner heart ; t cannot leave

245

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

out his name from the present book. He
was the author of South Sea Idylls, the
book loved by Stevenson ; he himself was
one of Stevenson's friends. Stoddard has a
charming essay or memoir of this great
romanticist in his Eooits and Entrances,
Richard Le Gallienne once invited us,
Stoddard and I, for dinner in his little roof-
garden in New York city ; that was in 1904.
And it was almost the last time when I was
with Stoddard. Many a lantern was lighted
that evening. There was a young man in
the party who had been telling me of his
breezy experiences in the South Sea; Stod-
dard's eyes eagerly followed the moon while
listening to the story. What a sweet moon-
night it was 1 His soul, I am sure, must
have been cruising in his beloved coral seas
— severed from every tie, politely letting
the world slip by. The teller of the story
assured us that the foreign missionary and
the American tipping custom were speedily
spoiling the whole island.

" They are a nation of warriors and lovers
falling like the leaf, but unlike it, with no
followers in the new season," Stoddard sighed.

Then soon after this memorial night, he
left New York for good as he said ; he
went to Boston, and then to California. It

246

EPILOGUE

was in the last place where he died several
years ago by the song of the ocean whom
he loved passionately. I had written an
article on him in some American magazine
in 1904 from which I like to quote the
following :

So, our love (love between Stoddard and
me, by Buddha's name) was sealed one spring
day, 1897. Sweet spring usually bringing
a basketful of some sort of surprise ! I
climbed up the hill — those days I spent
with Joaquin Miller, loitering among the
roses and carnations — and threw my kisses
toward Charley's " Bungalow " in Washing-
ton. Eternally dear "Charley" (as he was
called in California) ! The air was delicious.
I gathered all the poppies and buttercups,
and put them in a sprinkler. I offered it
to my imaginary Charley. From day im-
memorial he had appeared a sort of saint —
a half-saint at least. If he ever accepted
my offering 1

It rains to-day, the drops tapping my
window-panes frequently. What could be
more welcome than the renewal of memory ?
For some while I have been looking over
old letters. How wildly I used to laugh
at my grandfather engaging in the same
task in my boyhood's days I Here's Max

247

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

Nordau's. There's a poem written by the
genial Professor Van Dyke. This long letter
minutely written on the sky-blue sheets
should be from my dear William Rossetti.
What encouragement he bestowed on me !
What pains he took in suggesting a certain
change for my poem ! Isn't this the ac-
knowledgment of her Majesty, the Queen
of England, for my book ? Look at the
dear little crown in red upon the envelope !
That is by a certain Duchess ! There is a
huge bundle of the letters sent by Charley.
What a correspondence ! My letters were
an avalanche of sorrow usually. Once upon
a time I was quite proud in telling of the
many griefs in my life. He would begin
his letters with " My sad poet." Shall I trace
back our love, following the dates ? He once
addressed me :

" Sometimes at sea, in the midst of
the wave- crested wilderness, a weary and
affrighted bird falls panting upon the ship's
reeling deck.

" It was born in the Garden of Spices ; it
bathed its wings in perfume; it sang with
all the wild, free singers of the grove ; at
night the stars glinted on its dew-damp
plumage, while it slept on its fragrant
bough.

248

EPILOGUE

"But a fierce wind came and whirled it
afar through the empty spaces beyond the
sea's grey rim — whirled it afar until it fell
panting and affrighted upon the ship's reeling
deck.

** Then those who were on board tenderly
nursed it, and caressed it, and gave it
generous cheer, but the bird ceased its
song — or if it sang it sang only of the
Garden of Spices, for it was an exile for
ever more.

" So thou seemest to me, O Yone ! like
the weary bird, torn from its blessing bough,
and whirled into the midst of the wave-crested
wilderness.

"They who have found thee, would com-
fort and caress thee — I most of all — but thy
songs are tear-stained, and thou singest only
the song of the exile — a lament for the Gar-
den of Spices, and all the joys that were."

What a disappointment I must be proving
myself to him nowadays ! " You are a poet
of common sense," he denounced me not long
ago. Am I practical, I wonder? However,
I feel like teasing him once in a while,
saying lots of disagreeable things upon his
living without setting his feet on the ground
of Life — I, playing the part of bee buzzing
around a big idol. He will turn his large

249

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

blue eyes — how pathetically appealing they
are — and, of course with a sort of smile,
say : " God made me ! "

I have been getting rid of the sad muses
lately. I whistle into the air. I smile up
to the sun. Didn't he plan, some time ago,
to fly from the world — he with me — and
bury ourselves in some obscurity (somewhere
where he could smell the roses abundantly
and keep a few intimate books and **a
parrot to swear for fun ") ?

I found myself in the East first in 1899.
Ho, ho, Washington, Charley's Bungalow!
Till that day we had embraced each other
only in a letter.

I couldn't imagine his " Bungalow " without

the ivy vines, some of which would venture

in through a broken window — the broken

window adding a deal of charm. Yes, there

they were. How I wished it were not so

modernised with the door bell ! A door knob

if you must. There the moon would crawl

from the eastern window into the library, as if

a tired spirit (tired is Charley's) peeping into

the pages of a book. What a tremendous

number of books — each book with the author's

sentiments in autograph ! Certainly a few

tassels of cobwebs wouldn't be out of place.

"O Yone, you would fit in there,"
250

EPILOGUE

Charley exclaimed. We both sat in one huge
chair with a deep hollow, where we could doze
comfortably, its long arms appearing but a
pair of oars carrying us into the isle of dream.
It would have been more natural had I been
barefooted and in a Japanese kimono. " You
are far too Westernised," he condemned me
terribly. He looked at me critically and said :
" How handsomely you are dressed, Yone ! "
Did he expect me to be another Kana Ana —
a little sea-god of his South Sea, shaking the
spray from his forehead like a porpoise?
(What charmingly lazy South Sea Idylls
by the way ! ) I am positive he prayed that
I would come to him in some Japanese robe
at the least.

We talked on many things far and near —
things without beginning and apparently with-
out end. We agreed upon every point. We
aroused ourselves to such a height of en-
thusiasm. He told me a thousand little
secrets. (Aren't little secrets cosy ?) Is there
any more delicious thing than to listen to his
talk about nothing? Sweet nothing! The
nothing would turn to a silver-buskined anec-
dote at once when it was told in the Bungalow
— especially by him. What a soothingly balmy
atmosphere in the house, which might have

been blowing from a forgotten book of poems !

251

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

How full of little stories he is ! " Dad," I
exclaimed. It was only natural for me to
say that.

We slept in the same bed, Charley and I.
Awakening in the night I observed that a
light in the holy- water font, a large crimson
heart — now isn't that like Charley's ? — was
burning in golden flames like a baby's tiny
hands in prayer. What a solitude, yet what
sweetness ! It wouldn't be strange if we
became a sort of spirits in spite of ourselves.
By my side the dear Charley was sleeping
like a tired faun. Should I cover his head
with the ivy? Occasionally he snored, as if
by way of apology for his still keeping this
life. (Thy life be eternal !) I saw a scapular
around his neck, and a tattoo of the sacred
cross on his arm, done in Jerusalem — how
romantically Rome sounded to him ! He is a
Catholic. He cherished such a sort of thing
with child's devotion. I wonder if I ever
came across any more simple man than him-
self. He just reminded me of the Abb^
Constantin in the novel of Haldvy. (What a
dear book is that !) I shouldn't be surprised
to see him any day, counting a rosary, with
downcast eyes, around a monastery — San
Francisco del Deserto, perhaps. I left the
bed. I prayed for his happiness.

252

EPILOGUE

Poor old Stoddard ! His lovely writing —
what a breeze, what a scent in it ! — didn't
succeed in bringing him an ample livelihood.
He has been always to the edge of that suc-
cess which he has never reached. It is an
eternal question whether pure literature will
pay. "If I could only write trash ! " he
would exclaim.

He had been in the South Sea to shake off
the world's trouble. He had returned to
civilisation again, perhaps after turning to a
half-savage. How he wished to be a barbarian,
and live for ever in some cosy spot ! There
would be nothing jollier than to eat with
one's fingers, using a leaf for a platter. He is
always puzzling to find out where he belongs.
Not in America, to be sure.

"Yes, sea-chanting beach of Lahina, or
under the banana leaves of Tahiti ! By Jove,
if I could return over there ! I could build
such a life as here we can only dream of," he
would say, flashing a sort of dreaming eyes.
He had been longing with abundant lamenta-
tion, like one after the wife he has divorced.

It would be that he couldn't grasp tight the
real meaning of life, if he were a failure itself,
as he says. He is a born dreamer. He has
been living in the world without any motive.
(It may be just the opposite, although so it

253

THE STORY OF YONE NOGUCHI

does appear.) He doesn't know any worldly
routine. There is nothing more welcome to
him than writing. He will often answer,
however, with something about his "pen-
fright," when some editor asks for an article
on a certain subject. He would begin to
look unhappy since morning, if it were his
lecturing day. He was professor in the Ca-
tholic University, Washington, District of
Columbia. It was not so much on account of
the work. How he hates to be constrained !
He wishes to be perfectly free. After all, he
is nothing but a spoiled child. " I am even
a baby," he will proclaim ofF-hand.

He will serenely fill a convenient corner and
" look natural," and perhaps think about sweet
nothing, and occasionally get very solemn —
that is all he likes to do. Do you know how
he fits such a pose ?

He was in New York last June. He
appeared like an abandoned boat — perhaps a
Hawaiian canoe — terribly tottering on the ocean
waves, not knowing whither he was going.

(I often thought he was a genius who had
sprung up in the least advantageous time and
place. What a wonder if he should prove
himself under the right shade 1)

" 'Tis my life — my whole history of failure 1

I feel shame in such a clear exposition of

254

EPILOGUE

myself," he cried one day, holding his For the \
Pleasure of His Company, which had then '■
been published from San Francisco.

" I am sure you would like Miss Juno," he
reflected a moment later, speaking of one of
the characters in his book.

Doubtless he must have fallen in love with |
women in his life. He might have married
one of them if he had been sure of not getting 1
tired of her after a while. He often said, how
could he ever forget the scar of a wound
which he might give her in saying or doing
something he ought not to say or do — some-
thing that would make her hate him.

" I am a born coward," he would say, if you'
denounced his having no blood to risk.

THE END

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson <&* Co.
at Paul's "Work, Edinburgh

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